The Monitor’s All-Area Coach of the Year
BY HENRY MILLER
STAFF WRITER
Margo Iglesias-Iglesias-Cantu took over as head coach of the La Joya Palmview girls volleyball team in early 2017.
She recalls many of the comments she received like, “You’ll never win there,” and, “Why didn’t you wait for a basketball offer?”
“I heard so much of that,” Iglesias-Cantu said. “Everybody told me I couldn’t do it.
“That’s what drove me.”
Iglesias-Cantu took her team to the first playoff match in school history. The Lobos finished second in District 30-5A, behind only perennial power Mission Veterans, with a 6-4 record, winning their final three matches to make that historic first postseason appearance.
For her effort, Iglesias-Cantu has been named The Monitor’s All-Area Volleyball Coach of the Year.
“When somebody tells me I can’t do something, I go out to prove them wrong,” the fourth-year Lobos coach said. “I’m very intense.”
Iglesias-Cantu’s also a former athlete (and married to a Palmview football coach) who dabbled in just about every sport in high school before playing basketball at McPherson College in Kansas and Graceland College in Iowa. After she finished playing college basketball, she started her professional career playing overseas. However, at one of the combines she attended, she stepped on another player’s foot and ended with torn ligaments.
It was bad news at the time for Iglesias-Cantu, but a future blessing for Palmview.
She dove into teaching and coached at the middle school level for 16 years. At one point she was offered the job to be the first Palmview coach back in 2008 but initially declined, more interested in the variety of sports she coached at the middle school level.
“I did all sports. I wanted to master all the sports,” Iglesias-Cantu said. “But then after so many years I wanted to do something different and was asked if I wanted to move up.”
She took the offer and was rewarded with keys and a desk, in an office. She was on her way and ready to go.
“When I got there, it was, ‘Here you go,’” she said. “It was very different at the high school level.”
Iglesias-Cantu played at La Joya High for Diana Lerma, the accomplished coach at Mission Veterans, whose teams have gone undefeated in district for eight straight years. Lerma clearly remembers the young prodigy-turned-coach.
“What a hard-working kid from an athletic family and the sense of pride she used to have and clearly still has,” Lerma said. “Working there wasn’t easy but she brings so much excitement and high energy and enthusiasm with her kids just like when she played.
“It doesn’t surprise me that she’s one of those who knows what it takes to being the first to accomplish this, or do that. She knows how tough it is and how you can’t sit back on these kids. She doesn’t.”
In her first three years, the Lobos won just five district games, 2-12 being a normal type of year. However, in the shortened COVID-19 pandemic, the Lobos more than doubled their win output and the belief she carried with her, spread over to them.
“I promised them we would make the playoffs this year, then we almost didn’t have a season,” Iglesias-Cantu said. “That was tough.”
After each win, the Lobos would tear the name of that team off a sign that read, “Our Time.” With three matches remaining it looked like “Our Time” wasn’t going to be “This Time.”
“As soon as I got there they knew it was no ifs, and or buts — we are making the playoffs and we are going to have expectations,” Iglesias-Cantu said. “A lot of girls didn’t believe in themselves; the culture isn’t the same. Both parents may work, there’s no babysitter for a younger one, the kids have to work — sometimes they just couldn’t be here. So many trials.
“This year, these seniors believed no matter what. We started, but the next day we worked for the next game and every team had a name on that sign.”
Rio Grande City was the first name to be wiped away, the last was Roma. In that final match, the Lobos had already clinched a playoff spot. A win clinched second, a loss led to a round robin to settle a three-way tie.
Off came Roma’s name.
“Never before had the girls done well under pressure,” Iglesias-Cantu said. “I told them I promised them they would make playoffs but they had to go out and do it. They had worked so hard for four years. At one point I told them if they didn’t get on the ball, it wouldn’t happen.
“Now that’s it happened, it has to continue to happen. We want to be a team that makes playoffs every year.”