Kearny football looks to build on Llaneza’s first season

Photo by Jim Hague/ The Kearny High School football team begins its season Sept. 9 at home against Columbia. From left are Ryan Michaels, Winder Pasache, Nick Belotti, head coach Pete Llaneza, Owen Nee, Kyle Griffin and Claudio Lagos.

 

 

By Jim Hague

It’s the second year of the Pete Llaneza regime as head football coach at Kearny High School and he’s definitely prepared to build on a fairly successful 4-6 first campaign.
“It’s a lot easier for me in a lot of ways,” Llaneza said. “All the guys who played last year have a good sense of what to expect. They know the systems and understand what we’re looking for in terms of practice and preparation.”
Llaneza knows that coaching at Kearny provides a host of challenges, being a football team in a town and school where soccer is king. However, there is a lot of new interest in football in Kearny.
“We have a lot of first-year football players this year, so that’s a big challenge,” Llaneza said. “A lot of them are now finding out that playing football is hard. They had no idea how hard it really is. The core group we have are committed to us and have a lot of energy. We’re a lot faster along this year than we were last year.”

To read the full story, see this week’s issue of The Observer.

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