The Middle School football coaching staff: (from left) Assistant Coach Jacob Capps, Head Coach Zack Mejia and Assistant Coach Tyze Walker. Photo by Peter Day
After the 2024-25 school year, the Middle School football program was at a crossroads. The team, which two years ago changed from 8-man flag to tackle, was without a coach and the program was likely to simply fade into the Lucerne Valley wind. But then Zack Mejia, a member of the school district’s Maintenance & Operations staff and an LVHS alumni (Class of 2016), heard about the situation and stepped up to offer his coaching skills and keep the program going.
In May of 2024, Coach Mejia and assistant coach Westin Carlyle started coaching the Middle School boys basketball team. For the Middle School football program, Coach Mejia has brought in assistant coaches Jacob Capps, a Middle High School teacher, and Tyze Walker, an LVHS 2020 graduated who also works as an instructional aide for the Middle High School.
“Either the program was going to die, or we needed someone to take it over. All three of us were like, ‘We don’t want that to happen.’”
The players run through warmup drills during a recent football practice.
As Coach Mejia knows, there are not as many activities available to young people who live in rural communities compared to those living in more populated areas. He played football, basketball and baseball in high school, but Lucerne Valley’s middle school sports program wasn’t developed like it is today. So he’s glad to help give the middle school students a chance to play football.
“I really want to help out with the programs and keep them going,” he says. “That way they’ll have as many opportunities to do what they can.”
Coach Mejia believes that sports teaches more than just athletic skills, it teaches lessons that can be applied throughout someone’s entire life. One lesson is that there are some young players with lots of natural talent, but by being on a team the other players learn there is something to strive for. Experiencing losing also can help prepare a young person for the realities of adult life, he says. In sports, you can’t get away from adversity. You have to face it and do your best.
“You have to learn to deal with these emotions,” the coach says. A player’s new mindset could become, “This person’s way better than me, but I’m not going to stop trying to be better at something and be great at something. I’m not going to let that knock me down.”
When the players become adults they will already have these life skills, he believes.
Coach Mejia teaches the finer points of football prior to the team taking the field.
Students concentrate on their football classroom lesson.
Currently the football team has eight players, just enough for the eight-man format. There are three seventh graders and the others are Lucerne Valley Elementary 6th-graders. A few have played on Coach Mejia’s middle school basketball squad such as promising multi-sports athlete Jaden Crenshaw.
As a versatile athlete, Coach Mejia played many positions as a high school football player. He wants to pass along his vast knowledge to his players so that when they get into Coach Chris Klinger’s high school program they will already have an understanding of the game and with Coach Klinger’s guidance they can concentrate on becoming better, stronger, faster athletes. Before practices Coach Mejia begins with a classroom session that goes over the fine details of the sport.
“My plan with the middle school football team is to create a program for young men to teach them how to be held to a standard, how to meet that standard and to readjust your expectations after you have surpassed your standards. I was fortunate enough to be an athlete for the program and contribute towards winning league titles and getting to a semi-finals game. The program went through some rough patch years, but with Coach Klinger back at the helm we're back to at minimum being a competitive team, and now we have an opportunity with the middle school tackle football team that we can accelerate that development process and we move on from being at minimum a competitive team to being a playoff team — with aspirations of achieving more.”
