Victor Sanchez stood up from his seat as his father approached him from the audience.
Hector Sanchez extended his hand and Victor took it and the two exchanged a long shake as Hector looked his son in the eyes.
After telling his son that Victor will be heading to “bigger and better things,” Hector wrapped up his brief words with a simple message: “You made me so proud,” Hector said and the two embraced, fighting back tears.
Victor said he got into football at his father’s encouragement his freshman year.
“He didn’t want me being lazy at home, so I decided to play football,” Victor said.
Despite not playing football prior to high school, Victor made the varsity team his sophomore year and quickly found himself playing both sides of the ball.
“My freshman year I said my position was left bench, because mostly I was there watching everybody,” Victor said. “From there, I noticed I didn’t want to watch football, I wanted to play. It’s really cool to be able to tackle and be able to hit, so I was like I want to be able to play already.”
And to get on the field required a huge commitment from Sanchez just to get to the point where he even understood what was going on.
“First I had to learn the sport because I didn’t understand any of it,” Victor said. “… At first it was really hard because I didn’t know how to hit. I didn’t know how to transition from a three-point stance to full speed. Or which way to hit or which way to run all the plays.”
At first that was Victor’s goal, not even thinking about possibly moving on to college.
“I didn’t know I was going to be able to compete on the collegiate level. I’m grateful for what’s happened to me over the last four years.”
Victor said his football abilities really picked up when coach Jubenal Rodriguez took over the program and started telling the team crazy things like taking the team to the CCS playoffs.
“He said he had these plans of making it to the CCS playoffs. I believed him, but for it to come true my senior year was pretty great,” Victor said.
Victor said Whittier approached him to go to the college and a combination of the coaches reaching out to him and being impressed with his dedication to the game drew Victor to want to go to the college.
Whittier plays in the NCAA Division III Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference.
