Whitney Wildcats looking like a champion after 0-10 ‘never again’ season
The first thing you might notice about Zac McNally beyond his passion for kids, football and his slick black leather jacket is the mustache.
It’s a hearty 1970s version of upper-lip growth, rarely seen now unless a bet has been lost. McNally’s mustache comes courtesy of a deal brokered with his Whitney High School players. Keep winning, the theme went, and the growth remains, and worry about explaining the ‘stache years later when family and friends wonder, “What the heck is that?”
“The kids get a kick out of it,” McNally said.
The kids get a kick out of the coach, too, and there is irony in all of this.
A year ago, there were voices of concern within football followers of the Wildcats of Placer County. There were thoughts of kicking the coach right back to his Bay Area roots, or at least booting holes in walls in trying to digest an 0-10 season. Going winless wears on one’s soul and raises a lot of fingers of blame.
“There were definitely grumblings — was this the right choice?” Whitney principal Justin Cutts said. “It’s tough to go 0-10, hard on everyone, but coach McNally was the right decision. It just takes time.”
A year removed from its “0-10, never again!” campaign, Whitney bears the look of an upstart winner. Seeded ninth in Division II, Whitney’s revival has made for perhaps the most compelling storyline in the Sac-Joaquin Section. The Wildcats face against another upstart in No. 6 Elk Grove for the championship on Friday night at 7 p.m. at Hughes Stadium.
Whitney needed to win its regular-season finale just to qualify for the playoffs at 4-6 after placing fifth in the brutal Sierra Foothill League that includes Oak Ridge, Folsom, Rocklin, Del Oro, Whitney and Grant. The Wildcats moved to 7-6 after defeating Lincoln 42-21 in a playoff opener, followed by a 28-6 triumph over top-seeded Rocklin and then 20-17 effort at No. 4 Jesuit last Saturday.
Whitney showed promise in its first two games of this season, beating Paraclete of Lancaster 38-10 and Placer 47-34. Paraclete reached the playoffs in its section and Placer is in the D-III section finals. A 30-27 overtime win over Del Oro gave the Wildcats their first-ever SFL victory and even more hope.
Coaching impact
Quarterback Eli Brickhandler and running back Will Fischer have paced the offense and grunt guys such as Austin Hauptman, Andre Nolan-White, Ryan Vigo, Dom Spence and Nick Tawney have fueled the defense. But it all starts with the tireless coach who stresses that football often mirrors life. Things happen, good and bad. It’s how one deals with it and responds that counts.
McNally is closing in on his 34th birthday. He and wife Sarah have a baby due in March, so his plate isn’t just full, it’s overflowing.
“Sarah prefers my usual full beard but she supports the mustache just for the playoffs! She’s an amazing woman that puts up with my intense schedule along with all head coaches’ wives, especially when the season goes into the holidays,” McNally said.
McNally still looks like he could play linebacker, which he did for national super power De La Salle in the early 2000s and later at Northern Arizona.
McNally was brought in from the Bay Area by principal Cutts and athletic director Jason Fuerbach to jump start a program that had tasted section championship success a decade before under coach Mike Gimenez. But McNally’s early Whitney days were a challenge. McNally was still teaching at Logan High in Union City in the East Bay when he accepted the Whitney post in the weeks following the 2017 season.
“My first weeks at Whitney, we lost 30 kids at all levels of the program,” McNally said. Some players quit football, others left the school.
“Some didn’t want change. Last year was hard. The SFL is playoff football every week. It’s the best league in Northern California, and we had to get better, and we did,” McNally said.
McNally teaches strength and conditioning courses at Whitney, and the weight room was the foundation of program recovery.
“The only good thing about going 0-10 is you get an early head start on the next season,” McNally said. “They guys have been great. They’re resilient. The big emphasis was that weight room.”
De La Salle roots
McNally was a weight room guy at De La Salle, mentored by famed coach Bob Ladoucuer and young assistant Justin Alumbaugh, now the DLS head coach.
“One of the toughest kids I coached, total grinder,” Alumbaugh said of McNally. “Two-way guy, a captain. Was a sponge for the game. Loved the game. We definitely knew he’d want to coach.”
McNally was on the De La Salle team that in 2004 had its stunning 12-year, 151-game winning streak snapped. It happened in Washington to Bellevue, and it crushed the world of the DLS players who had only known and expected winning. Ladouceur, Alumbaugh and staff reminded that life is more than a game, and this: respond. De La Salle stated that season 2-3-2 and wound up 8-3-2 and winning another North Coast Section crown.
“My experiences at De La Salle helped me in coaching and life,” McNally said. “And I knew I wanted to coach.”
Del Oro comparisons
Cutts can appreciate what a successful football program can do to a campus and a region. He lived it as a student-athlete at Del Oro and then really lived it over 15 years as an administrator at Del Oro.
Del Oro in 2015 entered the playoffs 4-6 and seeded 11th in D-II and took off, capping the season with a CIF State championship under coach Casey Taylor.
“There are some similarities,” Cutts said. “At Del Oro, we had 50 years of tradition to help, but not at Whitney. Kids grow and so do coaches. Casey Taylor (now at Capital Christian) was not the football coach when Del Oro first hired him in 2001 that he is now, and Zac has grown, too.
“It’s awesome what’s happened this season. How a football team does can dictate the way the whole school year goes, and it’s been phenomenal.”
Brick tough
A year ago, McNally elevated Brickhandler to give him a taste of varsity quarterback play early.
Brickhandler never considered leaving the program, though it has become too common for players to bail when the sledding gets rough. He has friends who wondered about his sanity then but not now.
“I know college recruiters don’t like it when kids transfer all the time, and I didn’t want to quit on this team or these guys,” Brickhandler said. “I wanted to help change things. We knew we had the foundation to do something.”
As for the mustache on the coach?
“A lot of coaches are doing something, and it’s fun to see,” Brickhandler said.
This story was originally published November 27, 2019 at 5:00 AM.