Many football fans will be watching as the Washington Huskies take on the Michigan Wolverines in the 2024 College Football National Championship. One of those fans in attendance will be Coach Sergio Gonzalez. Gonzalez has been recognized by Mattress Mack for his generosity throughout the community and his impact on kids’ lives.
“I just love kids,” said Gonzalez. “Sometimes after practice, we bring out the barbecue pit and cook for them. If kids need clothing, we bring extras from home. There was a situation where a family in my program didn’t have enough money for Christmas and I wasn’t going to let them go without. With the help of companies, we were able to secure donations so those kids could have a Christmas.”
Before he was known as Coach Gonzalez, he was just a kid navigating life in Galena Park. For elementary school, he attended Our Lady of Fatima in Galena Park. In the sixth and seventh grades, he attended Our Lady of Guadalupe, a Catholic School in the Second Ward, and for the eighth grade, he attended Galena Park Middle School.
Born into a family of baseball players, Gonzalez was expected to follow the same path.
“I grew up playing baseball,” said Gonzalez. “I come from a baseball family. My uncles Mario and Benjamin Quintanilla were professional baseball players in Mexico. I have multiple cousins who are Division One and Division Two baseball players. And my dad was one of the top players in his high school program before he had to quit and tend to the family.”
At three years old Gonzalez began his baseball journey with t-ball.
“I was good at baseball, but I was never the best. Baseball wasn’t my niche. I was doing it because that’s what everybody knew to do growing up,” said Gonzalez.
Gonzalez’s father allowed him to play football in the fourth grade, first with the Wildcats and later with the Texans at the Wallisville Road Athletic Club (the WRAC).
“My first year, we went to the Super Bowl in the fourth grade, and man, I fell in love with winning and football. I loved the game of hitting people and the strategy. It was totally different from baseball,” said Gonzalez.
With a choice to attend either Galena Park or North Shore, Gonzalez followed his friends and took that passion for football to Galena Park High School where he later became a three-year letterman on the defensive and offensive line in the mid-2000s where they had their best run since the 1960s.
Gonzalez made the junior varsity team his freshman year but struggled with the idea of quitting after finding himself on the bench for most of the games.
“I was playing linebacker but I was really a defensive lineman,” said Gonzalez. “I told my dad I was going to quit and my dad told me, ‘No, finish what you started. Go through an off-season and in May if you want to quit, you can quit.’ That spring season, one of my coaches saw me squatting, and after seeing how much I was squatting he moved me to defensive tackle.”
Gonzalez kept that fire and became a rotational player his sophomore year, the same season when he fully internalized the lesson never to give up, not to back down, and not to be scared of a challenge.
“I’ll never forget my sophomore year being down 8-0 to Dayton for the district championship,” said Gonzalez. “Dayton hadn’t lost consecutive district games in four years and they had the best running back in the area at the time. The game was almost over and a majority of our fans had already left the stadium because they thought we lost. But with 1:35 left in the game, we came back and tied it up 8-8. We went to overtime and won 14-8.”
Building on what the team had established the year prior, Gonzalez began his junior year. In his senior year under Coach Ray Zepeda, Gonzalez became a full-time starter, helping his team go 8-2 on the season.
Gonzalez graduated from Galena Park High School in 2007 and began attending the University of Houston, majoring in Sports Management with a minor in political science with the hope of becoming an attorney or sports agent.
“Watching that movie ‘Jerry McGuire’ inspired me to look into being a sports agent,” said Gonzalez. “However, my junior year, a former coach who was at LaPorte reached out and inquired about what I was going to do. And I told him, I wasn’t sure if I was going to stay with the sports agent deal or change to something else. He invited me to a practice at LaPorte and that changed everything for me.”
Under the leadership of Dusty McGee at LaPorte High School, Gonzalez recorded the games on Friday night and began coming around the program more. This was his first taste of the coaching world.
“Once I got into coaching, I bounced around a lot,” said Gonzalez. “I began in Baytown at Horace Mann Middle School, then worked my way up through several programs, Ft. Bend Marshall, Katy Paetow, Dobie, and then Chavez High School which was my first head coaching opportunity.
Throughout his coaching journey, Gonzalez remembers those who inspired him and the lessons they taught.
“Coach Lee Martinez was my first defensive line coach during my sophomore year on varsity. At the time, he was my first and only Hispanic coach I ever had,” said Gonzalez. “Representation does matter when you don’t see a lot of people that look like you in the sport. I saw how he was able to be approachable and relate to all the kids no matter their ethnicity.”
Upon accepting the head coaching position at Chavez High School, at 32 years old, Gonzalez established himself as one of the youngest head coaches in Texas football. He later accepted a head coaching job at Sam Rayburn High School, where he is currently.
Gonzalez faced his former team at Chavez in his first year at Sam Rayburn. Gonzalez was excited for the new opportunity but also torn at the same time as his squad lined up against athletes he once coached. The stress, on top of not listening to his body, resulted in a heart attack after the game.
“It was a combination of not knowing my body. I ended up having two clogged arteries. The stress of the Chavez game really got to me. Having to play kids who I invested in that believed in me, and with me leaving, it was tough because those kids loved me and I loved them,” said Gonzalez.
After the game, Gonzalez knew something was wrong when he felt pain in his back and chest. He sat down but had a hard time getting up. The stadium manager at Houston Independent School District (HISD) came by with a golf cart and carted him to the locker room, where the EMTs checked on him and then gave him the bad news.
“Once in the ambulance, they told me I was having a heart attack. And I remember thinking I don’t want to die. I felt like I had a lot more to live for. I prayed to God and I told him, my mission was not done. Please spare me,” said Gonzalez.
Doctors put two stents in Gonzalez’s arteries while he stayed in the hospital for three days.
“It makes me appreciate my family and the kids I coach more. It’s a blessing every day,” said Gonzalez.
As one of the founding members, Gonzalez also serves on the board of directors for the Hispanic Texas High School Football Coaches Association. He continues his mission to inspire and impact as many as he can.
“There are many Hispanic coaches all over the state, but I felt there was a disconnect between a lot of them where we didn’t get to know each other. This helps us to connect and bridge gaps,” said Gonzalez. “We face some of the same stigmas other minority coaches face. One of the biggest ones is that we can’t coach because we didn’t play high-level football. There are negative stigmas everywhere. You just have to go out there and prove them wrong.”
Gonzalez has navigated from warming the bench to becoming a varsity starter to motivating kids who are in both places, inspiring them not to take their high school career for granted.
“I’m just trying to give them a life experience. Everybody wants to win games, but you only get four years of high school football, four years to be a kid, and enjoy this ride. How are you going to be remembered? What memories are you going to have for the rest of your life? For me, it’s developing those core values inside the kids to take with them for the rest of their lives,” said Gonzalez.
Because of his hard work and dedication, Gonzalez has been awarded the opportunity to watch the College National Championship game at NRG. When asked who he was bringing, he simply noted the man who gave up so much to help his family, the man who, when he felt like giving up, told him to keep going, the man he turned to when things were hard, his dad.
“My dad came from a low-income family. I had two friends who lived with us while we were in high school because they had nowhere else to go, so I learned from my dad to just have empathy and be compassionate. Some people need help sometimes, and it’s okay. It’s okay to help people out,” said Gonzalez.
