Earlier this month, Ventura College welcomed Jon Mack to the Athletic Department as the new head football coach.
Mack was one of three finalists Ventura College had considered for the head coaching position.
Mack is coming to Ventura College after coaching at St. Bonaventure for the past 17 years and holds the record for the most successful high school football coach in the county with a 163-47-1 record. While at St. Bonaventure, Mack managed to help make St. Bonaventure a threat to many of the teams in CIF as they won 12 league titles and seven CIF section titles.
Mack will be inheriting a football team that finished the season with a record of 2-5 in conference games and 3-7 record overall.
Student Voice: Why leave St. Bonaventure for a coaching job here at Ventura College?
Jon Mack: There’s a lot of reasons. First is the desire to challenge myself. The second is that we live in this community; we’ve lived here for 15 years, so we’re entrenched in this community and I would like to see this community college be great. So it’s a combination of a new challenge for me and a great opportunity to turn this around and win some national championships here.
SV: What are some of the philosophies that you would like to apply to the team here at VC?
JM: First thing is the work ethic that it takes to earn a victory, then the desire to compete at the highest level on a daily basis. I really believe the lessons you learn on the field, we can apply to everyday life. So that third goal is what we want to see is guys coming back as doctors or lawyers or as teachers and policemen that are giving back to their communities, and feel like, “Hey, Ventura College helped me in some way.”
SV: What’s the game plan or for next season going to be like?
JM: Right now we have a very small group of returning players that we are working on getting stronger and faster. We haven’t really done anything with the footballs so I couldn’t really tell you what we are going to hang our hat on. But I can tell you this; you’re going to see some great effort on both sides of the ball. The basketball team has a motto, ‘We play hard.’ Well, we’re going to play harder.
SV: Do you know of any high school players, yet, that are committed to coming to VC?
JM: We’re real excited. Recruiting has really just begun. We had our real first recruiting meeting on Tuesday night and we have four real good commits: Dee Pinkard from Hueneme High School we’re real excited about; from Ventura High School, player Derrick Clune; from St. Bonaventure, Joshua Aguirre. Those are all college football players…. We also have some guys coming from Division I schools that are saying, Hey, I want to be a part of this, I want to be part of something special.
