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INTERVIEW SERIES: Anthony Eustace

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An ongoing series of interviews featuring prominant Mustangs in the news. In this installment, fhspress.com sat with new FHS football coach Anthony Eustace.

With HECTOR AGUILA
and JOHN PACLE
fhspress.com Staff
Posted May 14, 2017

COACH ANTHONY EUSTACE: How are you doing, [I’m] Coach Anthony.

JOHN PACLE: My name’s John.

EUSTACE: Nice to meet you. I’m Coach Anthony Eustace, I am a former alumni at Foothill High School. I graduated in 2004. I’ve been working at this school for the last six years. I’ve coached basketball for the last six years, I’ve coached baseball for the last four years, and I’ve coached football for the last four years, all at the assistant level. Now I just became the head Foothill varsity football coach.

PACLE: Is football your favorite?

EUSTACE: Absolutely! Absolutely, it’s a sport I excelled in in college and the sport I played beyond high school so, I would say so.

PACLE: What are your best and worst moments of coaching?

EUSTACE: Best moments are seeing the guys get out of here after high school and going to the next level in football and sports they love to play. Probably the worst memory is that last Friday night where [it’s the] last game of the season and there’s no more football until next year. That's probably the worst memory.

PACLE: Sucks when it's all said and done.

HECTOR AGUILA: What’s your philosophy in coaching and it’s relationship to education?

EUSTACE: Education's always first. I didn’t get to where I am today without education. I had to further myself beyond high school at the college level and I think it’s important because if you want to play, you have to have the education first. The term student athlete comes in mind and the first word in that statement is student. You have to be a student first. Without student, you’re not going to be the athlete. So, that’s the way I put it.

PACLE: Education comes first.

PACLE: How do you deal with multiple sport athletes?

EUSTACE: My philosophy on that is probably a lot different from a lot of other coaches. When I went to Foothill, I played baseball, I played basketball, and I played football, so I was a multi-sport athlete. And now that I’m back at Foothill I’m coaching football, basketball, and baseball so I’m a multi-sport coach. I embrace it, I love it, I figured the more sports you play, the better opportunities for you to have a scholarship to go play at the next level for free, y’know? It’s hard for parents to pay for your kid to go to college, and if you’re playing multiple sports it gives you more variety and better opportunity to get a scholarship and you don’t have to worry about your parents going into debt paying for your college or you going into debt paying for your college. So I encourage it. I love it. Just coaches have to work together and try to create practice times at different times in the summer where everybody is practicing at one time. I love it.

AGUILA: I bet it gets hard too, huh?

EUSTACE: Difficult. I work in very close relationships with the basketball coach and right now we’re going through our practice times and where I can get all my guys here all the time, get all his guys there all the time and some of those guys play both and so, y’know, we’re working on a schedule, but it’s tough. Maybe one day out of the week we’re not going to be able to get everyone there cause they have to go to the other sport. It’s a sacrifice that you make when you have multiple sport athletes, but it’s all good.

AGUILA: How do you plan to reorganize youth football programs?

EUSTACE: The junior varsity coach that I hired works with the Junior Mustang program. He’s the athletic director for the whole program and working with him, you know, allows me inside of working with the whole junior program because the stuff that I’m doing here with this football team that I need the junior program to be running too because if they learn it down there, when they get to this level, they’re not learning, they’re just, you know, mastering and that’s important to high school programs because high school programs like Elk Grove, Folsom, Woodcreek, those teams that are-- that play at another level every single year, their junior programs are running everything they run and once they get to the high school level it’s just refining, refreshing, and mastering. They’re so many more steps ahead of everything and that’s what we have to get going at Foothill. So working with the junior varsity coach, how he has teams down there getting him to run our stuff should be the key for us.

PACLE: How would you describe the relationship between coaches, athletic directors, and principals?

EUSTACE: Everybody has to be on the same page. If we’re not on the same page, things just don’t run smooth and it’s important that you have a support system with your athletic director, and your principals and they have your back and go to fight for what you do and are passionate about what you do. It just makes everything run smoothly and everything more successful.

AGUILA: Has there ever been a time where no one’s on the same page?

EUSTACE: No. For the most part I think that since I’ve been here things have been on the same page, run as smoothly as possible.

AGUILA: You got it locked down, huh?

EUSTACE: Yeah.

AGUILA: How do you describe your academic and behavioral expectations for your players?

EUSTACE: I expect excellence, nothing less. In the last couple years that I’ve been here, I’ve noticed that things need to change; expectations need to change. I feel like we’ve let guys just get by and we can’t have that because we haven’t progressed, so in order to progress, things definitely have to change and we have to expect the most out of the kids. And I think if we expect most out the kids, we’ll get the most out of the kids.

PACLE: How do you handle the try-out/cut process?

EUSTACE: We don’t have one. If you try out, you make the team. I’m not going to cut any kid, I don’t think that there need to be any cuts. We’re having enough issues to get enough kids to play, so we’re not going to have a tryout, we’re going to accept every kid that wants to play, that includes females who want to play football. You know, I’m all for it, I’m going to encourage them. We actually have three interested right now, so I encourage it. We’re not going to cut out a kid based on them wanting to come out and play, you know? The only people that are going to be cut are people who cut themselves and if you want to quit, quit. I’ll still shake your hand in the hallway say, “Hey, how you doing?” But I’m not going to cut a kid if they want to play football.

AGUILA: What coaches, teachers, or other people have been a great influence in your life?

EUSTACE: One that comes to mind is the great Drew Hibbs. Coach Hibbs was my basketball coach when I was here. He was a great influence on me with life decisions and he wasn’t just a coach, he taught us. He was a coach in life, you know? He taught us a lot of things about growing up and expectations and holding yourself accountable and I think that the qualities that he instilled in me drove me to be the man that I am today. So you know, Coach Hibbs was a huge influence in my life.

AGUILA: Do students ever influence you? Do you see yourself in your players?

EUSTACE: Definitely! There’s so many kids that go across over the years that I can see a kid like TJ Pesefea this year. He’s such a hard worker and I see qualities of myself in him and it just excites me to see what things have in store for him, you know what I mean? Because he’s a great kid, comes from a great family, works hard, and I’m excited.

PACLE: What qualities are you going to look for when you’re hiring an assistant coach?

EUSTACE: Dedication is one of the main qualities to have. You can’t have coaches that show up when they want to, you know? I got to have guys that want to get these kids better. If you don’t have people that want to get these kids better [then] it’s not going to work. Starting from the ground up, you know, this is my first year and I’m trying to rebuild the Foothill legacy. I have to have guys that I can trust, have to have guys that are dedicated, and guys that are gonna be here all the time. Because if we expect the kids to be here all the time, we've got to have coaches that are going to be here all the time. Just guys that are dedicated.

AGUILA: Do you see yourself hiring one any time soon?

EUSTACE: I’ve made multiple hires already. Guys that I actually played with here. There’s four/five guys that I’ve hired that played at Foothill, know what Foothill winning tradition is all about, and all those guys have played, and we were a winning program. We went, in the four years that I was here, 36-2-2. We come from a winning tradition and we’re trying to get that back going here at Foothill.

AGUILA: What are your strengths and weaknesses as a coach?

EUSTACE: Strengths: My relationship with the kids. For our program to be successful, guys have to buy in and I think that my relationship with the kids-- I think my kids will buy into what is going on here and the faster they buy in, the faster things will start moving more quickly and progressing. My weaknesses as a coach is probably my relationship with the kids *laughs*. Sometimes it’s difficult for the kids to understand when I am Coach Anthony and Mr. Eustace. There’s a difference, you know what I mean? Drawing the line at some point-- for the kids it's partially my fault because I’m that coach who the kids all want to come be around. I just have to find [a way to] do a better job on the line for when it’s time for Coach Eustace and Mr. Eustace.

PACLE: How do you plan on improving as a coach from year to year?

EUSTACE: It’s going to take baby steps. You can’t go from a 1-9 year to 10-0 year. I don’t think it’s going to happen for us. Things have to change drastically and it’s only going to change if we take baby steps. Start with the grades; we have to do a better job at doing that. Start with being in the top shape you could possibly be in as a football program. Just taking baby steps every year to get the guys going the right direction. I think that will change for us.

PACLE: I feel that, you being the coach, you can do that. You have dedication for your athletes and colleagues alike and I feel that in years to come...

AGUILA:... Foothill will go back up to where it was. Do you ever see yourself stopping?

EUSTACE: My plan and my goal is to be the next Foothill football coach for the next 20, 30 years. This is where I grew up; I live all the way in Elk Grove [now] and I travel here every day just to come be a part of the Mustang family and this is where I want to be. Hopefully I can be the next coach Negri. Coach Negri was my first football coach, he was here for 45-plus years. He picked the school colors, he picked the school mascot, and I hope to be the next Frank Negri.

INTERVIEW
SERIES

JENNIFER JIM
FHS Music Director
Coming soon

HEATHER KING
FHS Principal
May 23, 2017

ANTHONY EUSTACE
FHS Football Coach
May 14, 2017

FOOTHILL HIGH SCHOOL fhspress.com SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA