By Chris Camello

One of the jobs of a head coach in any sport and at any level is to bring a group of talented athletes together to work toward a common goal. According to Kaiser High football coach William Cardosi, the phrase can be summed up in three words: “We Not Me.”

“‘We Not Me’ is about being a good person, getting good grades, and buying in and having that blue-collar attitude,” Cardosi said. “We’re not going to be afraid, and just playing for each other.”

That type of mentality has seen him experience some tremendous success in his first four years as the leader of Kaiser. The Cats were CIF champions in 2018 edging out Arcadia before defeating Eisenhower to capture the 3-A Division Southern California Regional championship.

That memorable year allowed him to get honored with the Dick Bruich Coach of the Year Award of San Bernadino County for his success of the 2018 season. 

Bruich is one of the more storied high school football coaches in the Inland Empire winning 20 league championships in his sterling career, which included four CIF titles, three state championships, and a national championship for Fontana High in 1987.

Bruich and Cardosi had a long history with one another as Bruich coached Cardosi when he was an offensive lineman at Fontana and has been a mentor to him, getting Cardosi his start in coaching.

Winning that award named after his former coach was certainly meaningful to him.

“It was an honor to win that award that year, it was emotional,” Cardosi said. “I still look at that picture of him giving me the award at halftime of the All-Star game. It was pretty special with my wife, daughter, and dad there.”

Cardosi spoke about Bruich with a tremendous amount of respect and reverence.

“You know that you are a great coach like Coach Bruich when you have a coaching tree like his,” Cardosi said. “To have that award named after him and for him to be there to present it to me is an emotional thing, because I love Coach Bruich. I love his family and they know that, and I’m indebted to him.”

Bruich’s impact on Cardosi and the Kaiser Football program continues to run deep. The offense, defense, and even the “We Not Me” mentality of his players and assistant coaches can all be attributed too Bruich.

“His philosophy of ‘we not me,’ ‘we don’t say I’…it all comes from him,” Cardosi said. “Nobody says, ‘my’ receiver, ‘my’ running backs, it’s ‘our’ receivers. It’s not ‘my’ defense, it’s ‘our’ defense. He’s the patriarch of the philosophy of what we do.”

Cardosi also spoke about balancing the mentality of coaching hard but also showing love to these players. “Practice has to be harder than the game,” Cardosi said. “We love the kids as hard as we coach the kids. We may coach you hard, but we’re going to love you hard. If they know that, they will allow you to coach them hard like that.”

Getting these players to buy into what could be considered an old-school mentality allowed Cardosi and his staff to be successful in 2019 even after many of the senior players, who helped secure those titles, graduated.

Despite the team being much younger and only one starter from 2018 returning, Kaiser went 11-1 during that 2019 season led by junior quarterback Trevian Tribble. 

“Coming off that 2018 season, the mentality was ‘wow we are in for a rebuild,’” Cardosi said. “Then Boom…under Trevian, we had an excellent 2019 season that nobody saw coming. (They were) just a good group of kids that bought in.”

Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic prevented Cardosi and his staff from having another championship-caliber season in 2020. The limited schedule combined with numerous health and safety protocols made the shortened year extremely difficult.

“I was the COVID police, I wasn’t a coach during the spring season,” Cardosi said. Cardosi’s role shifted quite significantly from carrying a playbook to carrying a spreadsheet keeping players’ temperatures, ensure they were filling out daily health update forms correctly, and getting COVID tests done.

“I normally called plays in the past, during that spring season I told (other) coaches ‘I can’t call anything, I have to be COVID patrol,’” Cardosi said. “I didn’t even feel like a coach…I didn’t know what I was.”

Because the schools were shut down and students were distance learning from home, many didn’t or were unable to show up to practice. This made the games during the shortened 2020 spring season very sloppy.

With cases dropping and protocols easing, Cardosi is hoping for a normal season coming up this fall. However, if that occurs, it will be a challenging year for Kaiser given they are now in a rebuild mode after many of their older players graduated. Not to mention the Sunkist League will be much more competitive with the addition of Jurupa Hills.

“We have a tough task, somehow Jurupa Hills ended up in our league,” Cardosi said. “They are by far the best team; they are getting transfer after transfer. They had a talented team last year that beat us up pretty good in the spring season.”

Even with a younger team where seven sophomores could be starters, Cardosi is excited about their potential. He has expectations for sophomores like running backs Donovan Price. Fellow sophomores Jonathan Marshall Jr. and Kiyel Tyler are expected to play both ways as running backs as well as defensive linebackers.

Cardosi also sights a defensive standout in sophomore Zak Afutiti, whose father, Bernard, played for Kaiser in 2003 and was CIF Division 8 Player of the Year. Afutiti along with twin brothers Claudio and Alejandro Santillan, both juniors, are expected to lead the defensive front this season. 

“Our defensive front is young but they are fast and aggressive,” said Cardosi. “With the two young linebackers, they are going to lead our defense.”

The quarterback will be John Quiroga or “John Q” as Coach Cardosi calls him, who was Tribble’s understudy the past couple of years but will get a chance to start. “He’s a program kid, he’s a senior, he’s been sitting behind Trevian for a long time and he deserves this opportunity,” Cardosi said.

While things have not been easy the last few years for Cardosi, he loves coaching at Kaiser High and feels fortunate to be in this situation and respects those who came before him.

“It’s been an honor to fulfill the legacy of guys who came before me,” Cardosi said. “There have been great coaches (like Coach Bruich and Coach Phil Zelaya) assistants, (like John MacKinney, Mark Olay, Gary Bertchtold, and Mike Donnelly) that came before me, and I never thought in a million years I would be the head coach at Kaiser High School.”

“To think when I did become the head coach, we’d be getting sized-up for rings in just my second year as head coach,” Cardosi said. “That’s pretty phenomenal and pretty surreal. For me I never thought it would happen. It’s a testament to what I thought was normal (but) was actually extraordinary, because I was around extraordinary men who taught us how to coach the right way.”

Coach Cardosi has tried to make this football program like a family atmosphere, always telling his assistant coaches to bring their families to games and events. 

He acknowledges these assistants like offensive line coach John Urquizu, who played on the O-line with Cardosi when both played for Fontana, and defensive coordinator Lance Ozier have been significant to the team’s success.

“That is the key to our success, it’s these men that I have been so blessed that God has put into my life, for them to be on this staff have brought that success,” Cardosi said. “That has nothing to do with Billy Cardos…that has to do with all of those guys.”

However, the one thing about the 42-year-old Cardosi, in addition to being a dedicated football coach and creating a family atmosphere with his team, is he remains dedicated to his own family.

“I hope that people will say about me he’s a great husband and a great father,” Cardosi said. 

He’s been married to his wife Reyna for 15 years and they are raising a three-year-old daughter, Aylish, whom they officially adopted recently. 

Cardosi wants to ensure that the person he is now is somebody that his players can look up to moving forward with three principles that are very important to him.

“Faith, family football,” Cardosi said without hesitation. “I’m working on being a better man; I’ve come a long way. I’m not as crazy as I used to be, I try to still coach hard, but I’ve tried to clean myself up in the image that I want these young men to see and be very loyal.”

Cardosi is an example of everything that is good about high school sports, a man of strong values and character which was taught to him as a player and a young coach who is now passing those similar values along to his players and coaches. 

Kaiser High Football should consider themselves fortunate to have Coach Cardosi leading these players and students, because he’s showing them the impact and benefits of a “we not me” mentality on and off the field.

Featured story | IE Sports Net, The Magazine – Fall 2021