Leonel Garza wasn’t planning to be a coach.
As he’ll tell you, he just sort of fell into it.
What he didn’t realize at the time is he was put on Earth to serve others and help those in need, and through a career that spanned 31 years of education, athletics and administration, he was able to do that within the community and on the gridiron.
Garza’s roots are buried deeply in Los Fresnos, started by his Tejano family on more than 20 acres of farmland that surrounded the town nearly a century ago. Growing up in the farming community just about 12 miles north of Brownsville, he learned the values of hard work, dedication and service following the examples set from his grandfather, who served his country in World War I and became a farmer, and his father, who served in World War II and worked as a farmer and a maintenance supervisor in the school district.
“Because of those two men, I have a right now to speak,” Garza said. “I’m proud of being a Texan, an American and (I’m) proud of my family.”
Instead of the battlefield, Garza would make a name for himself on the football field as a player and later on the sideline as a coach. But among all his accomplishments earned between the goalposts, his proudest moment was coming to the aid of his fellow man.
On the evening of July 7, 1988, Garza was watching Johnny Carson on “The Tonight Show” when across the bottom of the television screen scrolled a message asking for volunteers to help in downtown Brownsville. During a torrential rainstorm earlier that afternoon, the La Tienda Amigo department store had collapsed. Employees, customers and others seeking shelter from the storm were trapped under the debris from the decimated three-story building.
Upon reading the horrific news, Garza didn’t hesitate and immediately drove to Brownsville to help any way he could. Working alongside other volunteers, he helped look through the remains of the fallen structure in search of life. Using their hands and various tools from a nearby construction site, Garza and others moved pieces of the building throughout the night to reach victims. Garza recalled some of the injured trapped under the fallen debris were on the brink of death, while others could only be located by their screams in the darkness.
The next morning the efforts of his search party were rewarded when a woman was discovered within the wreckage.
“That’s when this arm came up … this lady had her rosary and blood all over her,” Garza said, the emotions of that day still fresh in his mind nearly 30 years ago. “We were working through dead people to get to them … we saved them.”
For three days, the relief effort would continue as Garza and hundreds of others recovered as many people as they could. The collapse left 14 people dead and 47 others injured, and the memories of that tragedy still haunt Garza and those affected that summer day.
A quarter-century before this disaster would forever impact his life, Garza, now 68, found his calling on the football field.
“This other stuff … I never expected anything,” he said. “It happened to fall in place.”
In 1964, Garza was a skilled freshman quarterback that helped Los Fresnos score nearly 45 points per game. He also played snaps at safety on defense that allowed just five points per game while posting six shutouts during the regular season. The Falcons finished 11-2, won a District 32-2A title and reached the third round of the playoffs under coach Earl Gartman. Garza’s sophomore season wasn’t as kind, however. After a 5-0 start, the team dropped its remaining five games — all district contests — and Gartman was relieved of his duties.
Garza was upset with the finish, feeling as though he could have done more and went to work the summer before his junior campaign.
“I didn’t want to be the reason the team wasn’t successful because I didn’t do my part,” he said.
Garza’s father received permission from the superintendent for him to use an empty old barn that served as a gym. On each corner inside the building, Garza created squares made of tape. Using a pair of footballs one after the other, he began his rollout and aimed toward the target. For the rest of that summer and the next, Garza practiced his throws until every one was a perfect spiral to the middle of the crafted square.
During that time, Garza improved so much that he got bored and had to come up with new challenges to keep himself motivated and working. That included learning how to throw the football to make it bounce back to him after a throw, using the football to hit the edges of the tape to take it off the wall so he could replace it the next week, and learning to throw left-handed. By the time he was done, both balls were worn out, but his dedication to his skillset paid off when Jerry Tomsu arrived.
The new Los Fresnos coach was hired prior to the 1966 season and brought his run-and-shoot offense with him. In an era when nearly every team ran the ball faithfully, Garza thrived with his arm in the new offense.
“The first year we played Mission (High) and it was a shootout,” Garza said. “We ran four running plays and I passed 52 times. At the time it was a state record … but I’m nowhere near the record now.”
Los Fresnos went on to win back-to-back district titles in ’66 and ’67 going 9-1 in 32-2A during that time. Following his senior season, Garza earned second-team all-state honors for defense at safety and was the top passer in the state for Class 2A with 2,137 yards and 21 touchdowns. He also earned honorable mention on the Prep All-American Football team.
Garza didn’t initially think about playing football beyond high school, but an opportunity presented itself, one close to home at Trinity University in San Antonio. He played well — he earned team honors his freshman season as its top offensive player — but played just one more season and opted to transfer after his head coach was fired.
He entertained offers from programs such as SMU, TCU, Oklahoma and BYU, to name a few. In the end, he chose to go to Livingston University in Alabama (now the University of West Alabama) because it was the only school that allowed a few of his teammates an opportunity to transfer with him. They all loaded up in Garza’s ’64 Mustang and headed South. Before getting too far, Garza stopped by a pay phone to make a quick phone call to his mother.
“I called to tell her I was changing schools,” he said. “In those days when you turned 18 you made your own decisions, your own choices. I told her, ‘I’ll be home for Christmas.’”
The decision to transfer would be one of the best choices he ever made, but it wasn’t without some adversity.
After a successful season his junior year, Garza separated his non-throwing shoulder during spring practices. He returned to Los Fresnos for the summer to heal, but by the time he returned he had lost his starting job. He was diligent and regained his spot among the starters before the 1971 season, but a change in the offensive scheme would put him on the sidelines again.
The team switched to a wishbone formation and Garza didn’t have the foot speed. A few games into his final season, Garza became the backup. He worked hard to get better and pushed the new starter every week in practice. The senior signal caller earned playing time in various games, but never regained his starting role. The consolation prize was the team went on to become the NAIA national champions that season.
Although the ending to his playing career was great, the ultimate prize for Garza was meeting his future bride, Wanda. When the relationship was getting serious during their final year of college, Garza contemplated his future and decided he still wanted to be a part of the game. Although not much of a football fan at the time, Wanda was supportive of her future husband when he wanted to return to Texas to pursue coaching after graduation.
Garza was reassured of her commitment with one conversation.
“I told her, ‘I won’t see you until 7:30 at night … Thursdays will be later and Fridays even later,’” Garza said. ‘“I’ll be working Saturdays to prepare for next week and making zero money’ … she’s been with me for 45 years.”
At the age of 22 in 1972, the recent college graduate got his chance as an assistant at Mission High working for Tomsu, his former high school coach. In 1978, Garza joined Gordon Foerster at Pace as the offensive coordinator and helped the Vikings win 42 games over the next five seasons, including back-to-back outright district titles in ‘80 and ‘81.
Sammy Montalvo, now the offensive coordinator at Brownsville Veterans Memorial, was the JV quarterback that converted to wide receiver and became a starter during the ’78 and ’79 seasons at Pace. With a run-and-shoot offense, it paid dividends for all as the Vikings went 16-4 over that span.
When Foerster left Pace for Corpus Christi King in ’83, Garza finally got his shot as a head coach after spending 11 years as an assistant.
“In retrospect, I just changed desks,” Garza said. “I got a job and I made the most of it.”
Continuing his own play-calling duties for the run-and-shoot offense, Garza led Pace to an outright district title in his first year at the helm and finished as runner-up during his second season. In seven seasons at Pace, Garza and the Vikings suffered just one losing season.
Along the way, Garza gave former players and fellow coaches similar opportunities that he was given earlier in his career.
“I got to know him as a player and then as a colleague and then worked for him,” Montalvo said. “I came back in ’87 and he hired me as the sophomore coach (at Pace). It was important (to him) that coaches meshed well together. When he became the head coach, he just changed offices — everything else was the same. He was a great boss … he let you do your job.”
Garza estimates that seven or eight of his assistants went on to be head coaches. That includes Montalvo, who was at Pace for a couple years, Jesus Amaya, who went to Hanna and then Los Fresnos, and David Cantu, who Garza gave his first coaching opportunity after college. Cantu eventually went on to Rivera before moving to his current position at Brownsville Veterans Memorial.
“He made me make big decisions on my own,” Cantu said. “If I went to him with an issue, he wouldn’t solve it, but he helped me. He valued everyone’s opinion that had a big influence on me. He let us live and learn in coaching, allowed us to develop and make our own mistakes.”
In 1990, Garza began a brief stint as the athletic director for Brownsville Independent School District. But he missed the sidelines and Amaya, who had just begun a stint at Garza’s alma mater, hired his old boss as the offensive coordinator. At the time, Los Fresnos and Port Isabel faced off annually in the Battle of Highway 100 and the Falcons were stuck in a long losing streak to the Tarpons. According to Garza, Los Fresnos ended that streak that first year upon his return.
When Amaya stepped down after the ’95 season, Garza took over at Los Fresnos for the next six years, winning another outright district title before retiring in 2001. Garza finished with 86 wins over his 13-year career, 10 of which were winning seasons. And yet he deflects the credit, in his mind, to those who deserve it.
“Every win was very tough,” he said. “It was those (assistant) coaches and those players that did it. Coaches … we worked together. I don’t ever say ‘He worked for me’ … I might have been the head coach, but we worked together.
“I didn’t lead my team, I was a teammate. I was surrounded with athletes, I just did my part.”
Garza’s legacy is one of integrity that goes along with his humility.
Cantu recalled a tough game where his team was down at halftime and no one had any answers. A fellow assistant suggested something outside the rules and Garza let him know he wouldn’t stand for such talk.
“(Garza) stopped what he was doing and chewed out the coach,” Cantu said. “He was never going to do something that was questionable. That stood out to me.”
Another time, Cantu made a tough decision to bench a starting quarterback that had acted up multiple times in class. Garza reminded Cantu of the situation in a handwritten note inside a card upon his retirement: “That’s when I knew you were going to be a great coach.”
Montalvo saw Garza’s values as a player and a coach and said they never wavered.
“He wants to do things right,” Montalvo said. “Integrity is probably the most important thing to him … that’s just the type of person he is.”
Garza was successful by making sure his players were mentally and physically tough and better prepared than their opponents, using tactics he learned from his own coaches and mentors.
“We’re going to train you so you have a clear mind and thoughts for three minutes,” he said. “The last three minutes in the game … that’s when it counts. If it’s close, they’re exhausted, you’re exhausted, who is the one that can still think? Who can still remember the count? The play? I pushed them and pushed them to the limit.
“If it was close, we were going to beat you because we were prepared.”
The coach had just three rules: Pass all your classes, make all the workouts and be respectful to your teammates, coaches and teachers.
“That’s all I want, that’s all I ask,” Garza said. “I treated all the kids the same. I was a bastard, but when push came to shove, they could always come to me for help. I was always fair.”
Garza used emotion to get his players to reach their full potential. It was a balance of love and hate and he used both effectively.
“He wasn’t going to be your friend, he was your coach,” Montalvo said. “He wanted to put you in tough situations to see how you responded. Get used to winning and how you were going to be when you lost. We prepared our kids to give it their all.”
Garza recalled having a player who got into some trouble one time, and the coach went to smooth things over with an administrator. The administrator, who questioned why Garza was helping the player, assumed it had to do with athletic prowess. The coach retorted, “I’m here because he’s one of mine. He doesn’t even start, he’s just one of mine. My job is to get him straight when he messes up and get him to walk the line in May to graduate.”
Even years later, coaches use some of the things they learned from Garza in practices to hopefully lead to similar success. Examples such as running 10 perfect plays to end practice and creating competition among teammates for certain drills.
“We still use some of the same things he did,” Montalvo said.
Soon after his retirement in 2001, Garza was asked to help the Los Fresnos school board. He answered the call to service — in November that mark will reach a period of 12 years — just like he always has when someone is in need.
“I wanted to see if I could make a small contribution to help the school district get into a good path for education,” Garza said. “Sometimes you lose track of the path of what you want to do … there was some questionable things that were happening in the district, but now we’re doing well academically.
“The way I am and the way I do things are far from trying to impress anyone … it’s just something I enjoy doing.”
These days Garza keeps just as busy as he ever has. Although he no longer has cattle on his farm — he had as many as 72 head when he was the coach at Pace to raise and sell and keep himself busy on the weekend. Garza still takes care of the family farmland, he built some stables to board horses and sells mesquite wood by the bag for Christmas money. And he has four grandchildren, two each from his son, Carlos, and daughter, Irma Estela.
In 2006, the Rio Grande Valley Sports Hall of Fame honored Garza for what he did as a football player and a coach. But in his mind, his greatest accomplishments didn’t occur on the field or sideline, it was helping to save innocent lives in their time of need.
“Every time I talk about that (Amigo department store), I get emotional,” Garza said. “It still affects me … that’s one thing I’m proud of that I did.”
Andrew Crum covers sports for The Brownsville Herald. You can reach him at (956) 982-6629 or via email at [email protected]. On Twitter he’s @andrewmcrum.