EL CERRITO – West Contra Costa Unified School District officials have not named the head coach they put on administrative leave over a viral video showing football players participating in a dangerous drill, but it was clear Friday night that El Cerrito’s Jacob Rincon was the person the district had step aside.
Amid social-media outrage after the two-year-old video recently surfaced, including ESPN college football analyst Kirk Herbstreit calling for the firing of the coaches, 16th-ranked El Cerrito responded with a resounding 56-0 rout of previously unbeaten Salesian in front of a supportive home crowd.
Majett Whiteside, in his first season on Rincon’s staff, filled in as interim head coach Friday. He previously coached at El Cerrito under the late George Austin.
“Sometimes you’re part of events that you had nothing to do with, and you still have to push through it,” Whiteside said. “So I tried this week to teach the young men to push through whatever is going on.
“All I know is I’ve got about 26, 27 young men that I’m responsible for, that I’m trying to make this the best season for them as long as I’m here.
“I haven’t seen the video. Not trying to be a cop-out or anything of that nature. I’m sure my kids have seen it and have been inundated with it whatsoever, and I wanted to keep them grounded. And to be honest with you, I wasn’t there. I don’t know what was the before context, the middle, or the end. So my job is to deal with the young men, and I’m working with the young men.”
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El Cerrito was clearly motivated Friday as it improved to 5-2 overall and 2-0 in the Tri-County Athletic League’s Rock Division.
The players said they appreciated Whiteside’s presence — the interim coach is a former Cal defensive lineman — but also said they missed Rincon.
“Everything that we do is for him,” said 6-foot-2, 250-pound senior Antonio Hines, who rushed for TDs of 6 and 46 yards in the first half, plus recorded a sack.
“He means a lot,” senior Robert Freeman said of Rincon. “He’s like a mentor, a father. He helps us with everything. He’s always there for us if we need to talk to somebody because he’s always on the school campus. So we can always go to Jake and talk about personal problems, anything. Jake is a really good coach. He’s not here, it hurts us. But we’re going to keep playing strong for him.”
Asked about the nature of the video, Freeman vigorously defended the program.
“If you come to our practice you can see we don’t even do hitting drills in practice,” said Freeman, who accounted for three touchdowns and recovered a fumble Friday. “We do individuals and stuff like that, we don’t do no hitting, none of that. We save that for the field out here. We’re a whole different program than two years ago.”
The players said they paid no attention to the outrage on Twitter.
“We all ignore social media,” said Hines, a team captain, “because we’ve had shots blowing at us on social media before, so we know how to block it out and deal with whatever we need to deal with.”
El Cerrito, which hasn’t allowed more than 14 points to any opponent, crossed the goal line five times on only 10 snaps in the first half against Salesian.
With a running clock out of intermission, Tony McAdoo took the opening kickoff to the house, backup QB Aaron Miles III scrambled for a 28-yard TD and John Mahannah scored on a pick-six.
“Our team has to learn from the mistakes,” Salesian coach Chad Nightingale said. “We had a couple of positive things. We’ll definitely point that out when we watch film. But we were outmatched, we were outplayed, we were out-efforted all across the board. They beat us on special teams, they beat us on offense, they beat on defense.”
Nightingale didn’t hold back on his praise for the job Whiteside, a former teammate at Cal, performed during a trying week of preparation.
Even if the Gauchos finished with 14 penalties for 148 yards, including a roughing the passer, two pass interferences plus multiple holding and encroachment calls.
“Give credit where credit is due,” Nightingale said. “They’ve had a lot of adversity this week because of all of the things that have gone on on the campus, all of the things that are in social media. I think those kids rallied around Coach Whiteside. Let’s give credit first to the coach because he had to lead those young men through adversity. And then, even more importantly, let’s give credit to those kids who responded.
“I didn’t hear them trash talk, I just saw them play hard. When they made mistakes, they came back, they rallied, they just continued to play. All hat’s off to that staff that was there tonight, they did a wonderful job.”
Source: www.mercurynews.com