Grant football ponders hitting ‘rock bottom’ and dealing with social media backlash
He is weary and his voice hoarse.
The toll of a one-win season is clear in his expressions, but Mike Alberghini still has his charm and humor.
In the most trying of his 52 seasons of coaching, and sometimes saving kids, in Del Paso Heights at Grant High School, Coach Al still takes a moment to hug an old friend or to say hello to a new one. This happened at halftime of Friday’s game in Loomis.
Beneath the smile there is a hurt, proud soul. Mounting defeats have caused the area’s winningest prep football coach to ponder what has happened and what looms next.
The Grant Pacers is in decline. The coaching staff is under siege by fans and parents who no longer attend games but savage the players and mentors mercilessly on social media.
Opponents don’t brace for tradition and all manner of ferocity and speed when the Pacers take the field like they used when Grant led the area in victories in the 1990s and 2000s, right into its last great team of 2014 that went 14-1.
Grant will miss the playoffs for the second time in three seasons. This sort of drought has not happened to one of Northern California’s storied programs and most engaging coaches since the 1970s. At 1-7, Grant is mired in its worst stretch since a two-win campaign in 1990, which led to Alberghini sliding over from 10 years as Pacers defensive coordinator to head coach in 1991.
Grant has won a regional-record 280 games under Alberghini with 27 playoff teams, 16 league, seven Sac-Joaquin Section and one CIF State Open Division championship.
But the rigorous Sierra Foothill League is not kind to young teams trying to find their footing. Area programs in general this decade closed the gap on Grant, and then some. Teams that start freshmen, sophomores and juniors and only three seniors will lose to powerhouse programs heavy on seniors, including Grant falling to Del Oro 38-21 on Friday.
At the half, when asked what the plan was for the final two quarters, Ablerghini cracked with a laugh, “Pray!”
Coach Al perspective
Grant players competed, and the coaches were pleased with that. Alberghini told me if he is only in this line of work to win games, then he would be misguided. He remains in it to impact and shape impressionable young lives, to provide opportunity, to offer a glimpse of the real world in terms of accountability and dealing with success and failure.
Alberghini feels for the players who continue to soldier on. He is also is baffled as to why some bailed on the process, quitting before the season or during it.
“Losing is never fun,” Alberghini said. “We’re just struggling right now. We had the area’s most wins for 20 straight years but times have changed. If you give into the fight, then you’re part of the problem. I don’t care about wins and losses right now. We’re helping kids, keeping their grades up. I want to finish this season, do the best we can, play as hard as we can, and see how it goes.”
Alberghini is never without purpose and fight. He should call it a career when he is good and ready. Anyone who has a football stadium named after him – like Grant’s stadium named after Al – has earned that right.
Alberghini will discuss his coaching future in the offseason with the only thing he loves more than his Pacers, wife Mary, who no longer attends games because she cannot stand to hear the things people say about the players and coaches. I sense Alberghini will return next season to watch this young group come of age, and wouldn’t that be some story?
He lives to coach. Alberghini does not golf, does not fish and does not shop. It’s football. And it always was.
‘There’s no mutiny here’
Carl Reed played for Grant in the mid 1990s and has coached the Pacers since 2001. He teaches computer science at the school and is the Pacers’ athletic director.
The coaches back Alberghini, as do the players, including two who said after the Del Oro game, “We love coach Al! He’s not the problem.”
Grant finishes this season against top-ranked Folsom and No. 18 Whitney.
Said Reed, “This season could be rock bottom. Every program has gone through it at some point. It just took us 30 years to get there. We’ve been spoiled and blessed. It’s a terrible thing to go through right now, but the potential with our young guys is there to have that upswing.
“There’s no mutiny here. The players still respond to Al. I know it’s been hard on him. This is just temporary. We’re a program that can shoulder this.”
Reed said the social media attacks on Grant irk him but do not surprise him.
“It’s the times we live in now – people go at everyone,” Reed said. “Grant has to be great, and great only, or people are upset. I tell people that I’m always approachable, but I’m not going to argue on a keyboard. Al is reclusive, though. He’s never near a keyboard. He doesn’t see it or hear it, but he feels it. We all do, but we’ll get this thing right back on track.”