Friday night lights are for football, when coming into this new season, we are welcoming a new football head coach and PE teacher. While welcoming him to the Pack family here at school, we will get to know a little bit about him, his football career and what amazing things he has done.

Robert Gatrell has done amazing things with his career like playing for the San Francisco 49ers, and the New England Patriots and coaching for many different levels of football teams, also being a PE teacher at his former school.

When getting to know him and his goals for this season he said, “One of the biggest goals I want for this team is to become more competitive and focus on the steps on how to get where we want to be.” As he becomes a new person on campus, he is still learning how things work. He says, “It’s a lot of learning and getting to know things but he is determined to make this year and season the best it can be.”

When I questioned him about his career in the NFL and if he thought he would make it that far, he says “Probably not I was not the best athlete student, but with the support system and the role models I had they helped me achieve that big goal for me.” He mentions that when playing it was such a big dream he had and never thought he would make it, but it does take a lot of hard work and support to get there.

By him getting that big opportunity to play for the NFL, he got to live and travel to play in Europe. That lead to him coaching for over twenty years, He coached for fourteen years at high school level, after that he coached for eight years at college level. Which now leads him to becoming head coach for our football team and PE teacher.

When asking a player about their opinion on this new coach, senior Vicente Hernandez says “Coach Gatrell is a very straightforward coach; he is very determined when it comes to winning, and he always brings a lot of energy to games and practices but overall, he is the perfect coach to have for this team.”

Now that we are halfway through the season, Coach Gatrell hopes to continue to do well this season, and to train these athletes to be the best they can be.