Interview: Mandeville football coach Hutch Gonzales high on Skippers, chances of 2020 season happening

As a school which reached the semifinals three times under Guy LeCompte, Mandeville High School had stability and had success during his 11-year run as head coach from 2006-16.

Then, LeCompte left for Holy Cross in 2017 and Josh Buelle took over for that season on an interim basis.

Hutch Gonzales took over the Mandeville program in 2018 after spending a year as the head coach at St. Thomas Aquinas, where he led the Falcons to a 7-5 record and the Division III state quarterfinals in 2017.

Gonzales is establishing stability at Mandeville, as the third head coach of the Skippers in 13 months.

Prior to coaching at St. Thomas Aquinas, Gonzales served as offensive coordinator at Fontainebleau and was a volunteer coach at Lakeshore.

As a player, Gonzales was a star at Covington High before becoming an all-conference wide receiver at Southeastern Louisiana and he played professionally for the Arena League New Orleans VooDoo, where I got to know him as the team’s play-by-play voice. Gonzales also played in the CFL for Saskatchewan.

After a start-over season in 2018 in which the Skippers went 3-6, Gonzales and the Skippers had a breakout season in 2019, going 9-4 overall and reaching the Class 5A quarterfinals.

In the playoffs, the 19th-seeded Skippers pulled a pair of upsets, winning 38-14 at No. 14 Barbe before shocking No. 3 Alexandria 13-12 at Sid Theriot Stadium. The run came to an end as Mandeville fell 34-14 at No. 11 Haughton in the quarterfinals.

The foundation has been laid and the expectations are high for Mandeville in 2020.

Speaking on The Three Tailgaters Show Saturday morning at 106.1 FM, Gonzales spoke about the strange times we find ourselves in during the midst of the pandemic.

“Everybody’s been using the word unprecedented and I think it’s probably used to death, at this point, but that’s what it is,” Gonzales said.

Still, Gonzales is very enthusiastic about having a maximum of 25 players gathered at one time as opposed to being able to have his full team together.

“It’s actually worked out really well, we really like what we are doing,” Gonzales said. “We may stay with it. We’re spending a lot of quality time with these kids.

On the heels of LSU coach Ed Orgeron saying that football was important to society, Gonzales agreed with the sentiment and provided analysis on the topic.

“If you just think about it from a numbers standpoint, so we got 2,000 kids in school, roughly,” Gonzales said. “You’re talking about 600-700 kids who are student-athletes and you have all their parents involved. You’ve got 3,500 people that show up on any Friday night. Then, you’ve got band members who are there to play their instruments. Then you’ve got dance team members and you’ve got cheerleaders who are there to entertain.”

Gonzales continued with the impact on others.

“As far as the school and the community, there’s thousands of people involved in the operation of a sporting event like football every single week,” Gonzales said. “To take that and just not have it, that is going to be difficult for a lot of people to swallow.”

If prep football cannot be played on schedule in September or in the fall at all, how would Gonzales feel about moving the season to the spring semester?

“I think you’re going to get the same answer from every coach,” Gonzales said. “We have boys on our team that need to play football, not just want but need. We have coaches who eat, sleep, breathe this stuff. We have parents who feel the same way. I don’t think anybody cares when we play. I don’t care when we play, honestly.”

The memory of the 2019 season has carried over to give Mandeville tremendous optimism heading into 2020.

“It was pretty special, especially coming off of the year we had in 2018,” Gonzales said. “It was a different group and a different mindset and mentality when we walked in and a lot of the success that we had last year can be attributed to the fact that we just had a bunch of kids who bought in.”

The Skippers are highly motivated to play in 2020 as a good, veteran team.

“We have 18 senior starters,” Gonzales said. “We have 15 returning starters. We’re going to have a senior class of up over 30 kids. To us, everything we’re doing right now is a review with our guys. We’re kind of on-ramping the young guys.”

As always, Gonzales feels District 6-5A looks tough in 2020.

“It always does,” Gonzales said. “There’s talent there. Slidell is always going to have a ton of talent, especially skill-wise. Ponchatoula’s got a stud that’s going to be playing quarterback. There’s always kids in this district that are going to give you fits. It really comes down to who prepares the best and who can put the best all-around team out there.”

Having coached at a private school (STA) and now at Mandeville, Gonzales has a unique perspective on the split among select and non select schools in Louisiana and wishes it did not exist, though he understands the motivation.

“These kids just want to play ball,” Gonzales said. “They want to compete against the best. You want to be able to go out there and say ‘yeah, I didn’t win the public school championship or I didn’t win the private school championship. There are so many things about the split that I’m not in favor of.”

How can it ever be resolved to bring the organization back together?

“I think if you’re ever going to get away from it, I think there’s always hope but I think we feel pretty entrenched because there are a lot of people out there who feel like there are some inequities, that there are guys who gain an advantage by being a private school. A neighborhood school like Mandeville, you get who walks in the door and we put that on the field. We’re probably still pretty far apart.”

Gonzales also believes that several public schools have a distinct advantage over traditional public schools as well.

“Check the public school state championships over the past few years at most of these levels and tell me where those magnet schools stand,” Gonzales said. “You can draw your own conclusions.

Mandeville is scheduled to open its 2020 season at home against Poparville, MS on Sept. 4.

“In my first year, I walked into 27 sophomores last year that turned into 28 juniors and this year they have turned into 30 seniors as we collected a couple of athletes from the baseball team, maybe from the basketball team,” Gonzales said. “They see the way that we do things and want to be involved.”

The enthusiasm begins with a superb player at the most important position on the team.

“We gave a three-year starter at quarterback (Devin Tott) and he’s one of the better ones in the state,” Gonzales said. “He’s got some weapons to get the ball to. Our defensive box is going to be big and strong, very experienced. We are very excited about the prospects of getting to have a football season this year. These kids have really worked hard for it. They’ve earned it.”

Now, if we can just skip past the pandemic so we can see this talented group of Skippers perform, everyone in blue would be happy, not feeling blue.