One of the toughest things Paul Rosa had to do was break the news to his Wilcox baseball team, which last spring celebrated a Central Coast Section Division I title.
Rosa will be with the team this season, but then his attention will turn strictly to football.
A quarterback, receiver and free safety at the school in the early 1990s, Rosa was chosen to replace Dan Brown as the school’s football coach. Brown stepped down after the season.
“We’ve got a lot of on-campus coaches that are good coaches,” said Rosa, who graduated from Wilcox in 1995 and played community college baseball. “That kind of made the decision easier for me. I didn’t have to go out and look for an entire staff.”
Rosa has been an offensive coordinator at Wilcox and spent one year as the frosh-soph team’s head coach. If he’s as successful on a football sideline as he has been in a baseball dugout, Wilcox’s football team will be in good hands.
In eight years as the school’s baseball coach, Rosa has never had a losing season while posting a 188-81 record.
Why leave baseball?
As Rosa put it, he sees football as the ultimate team sport.
“There is no way one guy can carry you,” Rosa said. “In baseball, sometimes you get a really good pitcher, and he can win the game for you at times. Not to say baseball is not a team sport. But in football, you just rarely see that. You can have a guy have a great game, but there is no way he can do that without the people in front blocking for him. You need everybody that’s out there in order to be successful.”
The immediate challenge Rosa faces is getting more players out for football. “From what I understand, our numbers are a little bit down,” he said. “Right now we have a weight-room class. Usually that number is in the 60s, and it started out at 35. We have to try to get some of the kids in the school back into that class, into the program. I think they’re out there. We just have to try to go get them.”
Rosa takes over a team that reached the CCS Division II semifinals last season.
