Head coach Michael Salinas finally gets his opportunity

A two-game season for Javelina football.

It has been over a year since competition has taken place at TAMUK for the football team and it’s been more than a year since the hire of former player and new head coach Michael Sa- linas. To start his tenure, Salinas came in and in- troduced toughness and determination, charac- ter and accountability, a winning attitude and a mindset of greatness to the Javelina Football team. Co-Defensive Co- ordinator Chris Jones enjoys having the job working alongside Sali- nas.

“It’s great,” he said. “It’s an opportunity to grow more in the pro- fession and have more responsibilities.”

Due to COVID-19 and its sudden arrival into everyone’s lives around the world, football has been on a hiatus and for the first time in history, football was not played in the fall semester this school year at TAMUK. The Javelinas continued to work however, within the COVID guidelines, and get better at every

opportunity possible. Salinas and his staff made sure the players were safe and practice all things with COVID safety in mind to ensure

a season in the future. Because of these ef- forts, finally an opportu- nity has presented itself to have a season. Two games against West Tex- as A&M on March 6 and UT Permian Basin on March 20 here at Javeli- na Stadium are planned

to take place.
“Our guys understand

that we are gonna have a win-it-all mentality,” Sa- linas said in an interview with Javelina Athletics.

“That’s gonna be our mindset. I think we have to approach it the same,

but we do have an op- portunity this spring whether we like it or not.”

No doubt the team is behind their head coach. Defensive lineman, Ez- rah Thibodeaux, de- scribes being a player for Salinas.

“He’s a tough coach but he knows what he’s doing with us as players and I love a coach who gets the most out of his guys,” Thibodeaux said.

Salinas, his staff and his players have been waiting for what seems forever for the oppor- tunity to showcase the improvement from adisappointing 2019 and it finally presents itself on March 6.