By Heidy Ornelas

Q:  What made you decide to teach here at Wheat Ridge high school?

  A: The rich tradition here at WRHS. It is easy to see the commitment to excellence when you walk through the doors.

Q:  What are you looking forward to the most as a coach here at WRHS?

  A: Being a part of a program that has had such great success over the years is exciting. We want to do our part to uphold the tradition that has been established here. There is a great responsibility to do that.

Q:  Where have you played football?

  A: I played football in high school and volunteered as an undergraduate student with Ohio State’s football team. I was able to learn how to be a coach from some of the great coaches on staff.

Q:  What experience have you had coaching?  And where?

  A: 1991-94: Student assistant coach

(Ohio State University)

1994-1996: Graduate assistant football

Coach (Youngstown State University)

1997: Graduate assistant football

Coach (Indiana University)

1998-2003: Assistant football coach

(Warren G. Harding H.S., Warren, Ohio)

2004-2011: Head football coach (Ursuline H.S., Youngstown, Ohio)

2012-2013: Head football coach (Poudre H.S., Fort Collins, Colorado)

Q:   What are your coaching goals, both short and long term?

  A: Short term–lead Wheat Ridge back to being a state championship contender consistently.

Long term–develop our players to be better people because of their involvement in our program. We want them to be good citizens when they leave this school.

Q: How will you handle the winning tradition here at WRHS?

   A: We want our kids to understand the tradition and to understand the importance of continuing the tradition. We also want them to do things the right way. We will emphasize hard work and character as being the two key ingredients to being successful.

Q:  What is your philosophy on coaching?

   A: We want to put our players in a position to be successful. I am not a coach that is tied into doing any one thing on offense or defense. We want to use schemed that will feature our players’ strengths. As a result, we may look different from one year to the next.

Q:  Who do you believe your standout players are?

  A: Jordan Jones is our leading player on offense right now statistically. Brandon Saunders has done a great job blocking for him. Defensively, Sylas Anderson has been named player of the week twice already. We have a lot of new varsity players this year, and are relatively young in a lot of areas. Our kids have improved dramatically since we started practice in the summer and are getting better every day.

Q:  How were the new uniforms chosen?

  A: We wanted to go “old school” to feature the great tradition here at The Farm. The gold helmets with gold pants were used for some of the great teams here in the 1990s.

Q: Do you have anything you want the community to know about you?

  A: My family and I are excited to be here. It is a great place to work and to live.