The year of 2022 at Saint John’s Catholic Prep brought in many victories for sports. The girls’ volleyball team won their conference and the girls’ track team won multiple championships, breaking school history. SJCP had never prevailed in Track and Field until the girls’ team was fortunate enough to receive a banner in the Plamondon Gym, signifying their victory in the IAAM All-Conference Track and Field 2022 Championship. None of this would have been possible without the leadership of head coach, Christian Villarosa, who had only been promoted to head coach in the prior season. Due to an unexpected leave by the former Track and Field coaches, Coach Villarosa was asked to take up the position. This led to the start of new methods he formulated throughout the years that helped coach the girls’ team to victory as an assistant coach.
Coach Villarosa is an alumnus of Saint John’s Catholic Prep. He returned to the school to coach cross country and track in the Fall of 2020 after finishing his education at Elizabethtown College. This is his third year coaching at the school, and while he is relatively new, he has extensive experience with Track and Field. He ran and jumped for the SJCP team and his college team.
When asked about what new techniques he integrated, he stated that his initial approach was to try to “figure out the best event plan for everyone” and how to “utilize everybody’s skill sets efficiently and effectively” in order to score points in every event. He would calculate the maximum number of points each athlete on the team could realistically earn and use that information to gauge the rigor of his workouts. There would be times when he put athletes in events they hadn’t tried before because he observed their “skillset” and saw that event as something they’d be strong at. For instance, Kailey Nicholas, a sophomore at the time, was “convinced she was not good at long jump”, but scored bronze at championships.
The majority of his coaching experience and methods are based on his Track and Field experiences. When it came to motivating the team, a lot of the “similarities are with [his] high school coach”. When it came to technique and organizing athletes event-wise, he stated that he gained methods and techniques from things he has seen on the internet and what he has learned as an athlete.
He received the “Coach of the Year” award at SJCP shortly after winning the girls’ Track and Field Championship. He continues to coach Cross Country and will coach Indoor Track in the winter and Track and Field in the spring, where he will continue to motivate and coach his athletes to victory.
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