The challenge Andy Fetsis faces as the new head football coach at Catalina High School is a daunting one with the Trojans’ last winning season 17 years ago, when some of the current players were not born yet.
A believer through any circumstance is needed to lead the moribund program.
Nobody has a stronger sense of faith than Fetsis, a deeply religious person who is an area representative of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes.
“This was unexpected,” Fetsis said of becoming Catalina’s head coach in June.
“I got to meet these young men through my vocation with Fellowship of Christian Athletes in a huddle on campus … We had over two-thirds of the football team showing up. A lot of other athletes started showing up. And as we went through this — we meet weekly — it all came about from that. I fell in love with these kids, their lives, their hearts … I want to be here for them as a mentor.”
Catalina’s dormant program appears as if it may finally awake under new coach Andy Fetsis, who has a winning background coaching football and tennis at Pusch Ridge. Part of Fetsis’ impressive staff at Catalina is Manny Olague, one of the best high school football players of his… pic.twitter.com/j1lDmS08VH
— Javier Morales (@JavierJMorales) August 21, 2024
Fetsis is new to Catalina but his name has been recognizable for the last 30 years with football and tennis in Southern Arizona with his background at Sabino as a football player and at Pusch Ridge as a football assistant and the head girls tennis coach.
He was an assistant coach under Troy Cropp in 2015 when Pusch Ridge won the 3A state title and he was the defensive coordinator in 2017 under Jerry Harris when the Lions advanced to the state championship game and finished 13-1.
His son Christian was a dual-threat quarterback for Pusch Ridge that season who rushed for 1,181 yards and passed for 1,296 with 32 touchdowns.
The elder Fetsis also coached the Pusch Ridge girls tennis team to state titles from 2017-19 with his daugther Sofia one of the standouts. He coached his younger daughter Estelle to the doubles state title last season. He will continue to coach Pusch Ridge’s tennis program and Estelle (a senior) in the spring after leading the Trojans’ football program this fall.
“With football, I started coaching in 1998 at Rincon, and it’s a totally different beast,” Fetsis said. “Tennis for me, it’s you come out, you have stations, you run drills. A lot of the kids play out of season. You can only teach tennis players so much in short practices in the tennis season. So for me, it’s a vacation to do tennis coaching.
“Every football coach knows it’s a grind, and especially when you don’t have the help and you don’t have the resources. At Catalina, we still don’t have the resources. So I’ve had to fundraise. We had to get a lot of new equipment, a lot of new stuff on top of trying to get these kids ready to play and get things organized. I’m just wearing those hats. It’s been a little bit heavier of a load than I was hoping it would be to start this first year, but I kind of expected it.”
Catalina football revitalized under the direction of first-year coach Andy Fetsis, who has a winning background as an assistant at Pusch Ridge. #TUSDMediaDay pic.twitter.com/IyCBTX99wI
— Javier Morales (@JavierJMorales) August 18, 2024
Fetsis has enlisted the help of heavy hitters when it comes to high school football in Southern Arizona, including former Sabino teammate Manny Olague, a safety who was one of the most dynamic competitors from around here more than 30 years ago.
Fetsis and Olague were members of the Sabercats’ state championship team in 1990 under Jeff Scurran. Olague is helping to coach Catalina’s defense.
“I reached out to (Olague), and I said, ‘Manny, I got this job at Catalina and I’d love to have you, man,'” Fetsis said. “He works a lot with foster care. He’s a therapist. He deals a lot with kids from broken homes and struggles.
“When he found out that I was at Catalina, and he was invited to help me, he got fired up. He’s out there. He’s pouring into these kids. He’s so glad that he did it. We’re having a good time together.”
Former Santa Rita standout running back and defensive back Aubura Taylor, who was part of Scurran’s Santa Rita teams that went 23-5 in 2008 and 2009, is working with the defensive secondary. He will coach Catalina’s boys basketball team.
Harris is serving as a consultant and longtime local assistant coach Bob Ingram, the offensive coordinator with Pusch Ridge when it won the state title in 2015, is helping as an assistant coach. Ingram has also been part of staffs in the last quarter century at Sabino, Tucson, Sunnyside, Catalina Foothills and Mountain View. He most recently was on Kent Middleton’s staff at Pusch Ridge.
“I’ve worked with Coach Ingram a lot of years together; he’s a great brother, a great man,” Fetsis said. “When you have a group of guys call you up and say, ‘Coach, how can we help you?’ Because they know that I need to help, because I’m wearing the hats of many right now to get this thing off the ground, that says everything you want to know about their character.
“I think they love me as much as I love them. And like I say, we’re a family, and we’re going to go out there and we’re going to compete hard together. We win together. We’ll lose together. But that’s not going to change the love that we have for one another on this football team.”
Fetsis, Ingram, Harris, Olague, Taylor, and Keith Edwards, a holdover from the previous staff, are trying to turn around a Catalina program that has struggled mightily since its first year in 1955.
After Catalina finished 6-4 in 2007 under Shawn Wasson, the Trojans have compiled a record of 35-115, winning only 25 percent of their games.
Catalina has advanced to the state playoffs only once in the 70-year history of the program — in 2009, losing 48-0 in the first round of the 4A Division II state tournament to Cottonwood Mingus to finish 5-6 under Sam Rolfe.
The program has enjoyed only eight winning seasons over seven decades.
“I’ve learned there will be adversity, but you’ve got to see through it no matter what the challenge is,” senior linebacker and quarterback Larenz Blackowl said. “No matter what it is, (we’ll) get through it. You just have to stay with a clear mind and focus on what the prize is, really.
“This will pass. That’s what I’ve learned.”
The problems Catalina has faced over the years include a lack of participants and resources, inconsistent community buy-in and eligibility concerns.
Fetsis is the sixth head coach following Wasson’s departure after the 2007 season. He replaced Greg McKinstry II, who coached the Trojans for three seasons, compiling a 5-25 record, before taking over at Catalina Foothills.
CATALINA
Head coach: Andy Fetsis (first year at Catalina and overall)Trojans compete in the 2A San Pedro, *Region game. Games at 7 p.m.
| Date | Opponent | W/L | Ovr | Reg |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8/23 | at Highland Prep | -- | -- | -- |
| 8/30 | NFL Yet | -- | -- | -- |
| 9/6 | at ALA-Anthem South | -- | -- | -- |
| 9/20 | Bisbee* | -- | -- | -- |
| 9/27 | at Tanque Verde* | -- | -- | -- |
| 10/4 | Santa Rita | -- | -- | -- |
| 10/11 | Tombstone* | -- | -- | -- |
| 10/18 | at Benson* | -- | -- | -- |
| 10/25 | Palo Verde* | -- | -- | -- |
| 11/1 | at Willcox* | -- | -- | -- |
Fetsis did not become Catalina’s head coach until June, outside of the school year, so he has had little to no time to address the numbers game with prospective students who may want to play football. He managed to organize a bonding retreat for the players to Northern Arizona University for a brief time this summer.
“What the players tell me and the AD (athletic director Tim Bridges) tells me is that we have two to three times the numbers in summer ball, which is averaging around 28 to 25 kids, and now our roster currently sits close to 38 kids,” Fetsis said. “We may lose some of those to some attrition, but I think our roster is going to sit in somewhere around 35 kids, which is almost double what they had last year on the sidelines.”
Senior tackle Korri Sanders, who is 6-foot-3 and 330 pounds, is a giant in stature and with his leadership skills.
He will be a coach on the field for Fetsis with his ability to communicate and encourage.
“The biggest thing is we practice how we play,” Sanders said. “The intensity you bring in practice is the intensity you bring in the game. In past seasons, we haven’t had the intensity. This season, we’re bringing the intensity into practice so we can bring it into games.”
Fetsis knows how to build a football program from the ground up with his experience at Pusch Ridge.
He and Cropp developed a middle school program in Oro Valley starting in 2010. They coached fifth through eighth graders for two years until Cropp became Pusch Ridge’s head coach and Fetsis joined him as an assistant in 2012.
Only three years later, in 2015, Pusch Ridge won Southern Arizona’s last state title until Sabino earned the 3A championship last December.
Fetsis is now building a similar belief system while strengthen the skill level among Catalina’s players.
“He’s brought the team together, but most importantly, he’s helped us get to know each other on a deeper level, a deeper connection,” senior running back/linebacker Fernando Mesquita said.
“We put the word out (to the Catalina student body) that our coach (Fetsis) really loves the players,” senior linebacker and center Ace Lewis said. “He loves everyone out there and that may want people to go out there and play some football.
“We just tell players, ‘You don’t have to be good; we’ll make you good.’ That’s all you need. … Him and Coach Ingram, they just know everything after coaching all of these years.”
Fetsis’ son Christian is unable to coach with his father this season because he is managing the family’s house-cleaning business, This Clean House. The elder Fetsis has owned the business since 1996. He hopes Christian can coach with him next season.
His younger sons are in middle school. He originally planned to spend more time with them as they continue to develop in football.
“This door opened,” Andy Fetsis said. “I really felt like God opened this door for me to walk through, to invest in the lives of these kids and kind of continue this family I think that we have established here at Catalina.”
Catalina’s season opener is Friday at Surprise Highland Prep, a school coming off a 3-7 record, similar to the Trojans a year ago. Kickoff to the Fetsis Era is at 7 p.m.
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ALLSPORTSTUCSON.com publisher, writer and editor Javier Morales is a former Arizona Press Club award winner. He is a former Arizona Daily Star beat reporter for the Arizona basketball team, including when the Wildcats won the 1996-97 NCAA title. He has also written articles for CollegeAD.com, Bleacher Report, Lindy’s Sports, TucsonCitizen.com, The Arizona Republic, Sporting News and Baseball America, among many other publications. He has also authored the book “The Highest Form of Living”, which is available at Amazon. He became an educator in 2016 and is presently a special education teacher at Sunnyside High School in the Sunnyside Unified School District.
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