New Coach Has Albany Football Team Ready to Go

The Football team is ready for some good things to happen.

Coming off a 1-9 season, the Cougars are hoping to make a splash in the Bay Shore Athletic League and the man hired to try and make that happen is new head football coach John Trotman.

Trotman, an assistant at San Leandro High School for the past nine years, was hired in late January to be the man to try and turn around a struggling program. The Cougars have averaged just over two wins a year since the 2003 season.

Trotman feels the time to turn the corner with the program is now.

“Losing is not an option,” Trotman said. “Our goal is to get into the playoffs. We want to stay healthy and be able to play four quarters of football. It‘s an exciting challenge for the kids and for me.”

In taking over the program, Trotman has learned on the fly how to put an entire program together. It has had its ups and downs, but he now feels he has the pieces in place to make Albany respectable from top to bottom.

“The life and blood of the program is the junior varsity,” Trotman said. “It’s important that they do well and do the same things we are doing here at the varsity level.”

At first Trotman was torn between the kids he had been coaching and the challenge of rebuilding the Albany program.

“I took the job, then a few weeks later I called back and said I didn’t think it would work,” Trotman said. “ I met with the kids (at San Leandro) to tell them I was leaving and I was torn. I had an attachment with them and I wanted to see things through with them.

“But I had thought about being a head coach for too many years and I thought it was a good fit here at Albany. And these kids are a great bunch.”

So after building the coaching staffs at both levels, in which he kept a few returning coaches and hired the rest from the outside, Trotman turned his attention to the field. He has had a solid 29 kids out since practice started, including 11 returners.

“These are good people here,” he said. “They are working hard and everybody is excited.”

One of the top newcomers for the Cougars is senior quarterback Kyle Tannahill. He played quarterback for the junior varsity team as a sophomore, but more recently played catcher for the baseball team, which lost in the first round of the North Coast Section playoffs.

“Kyle is very smart and a very good leader," Trotman said. “He’s a tall kid and we are going to game plan for that and take what they give us.”

The Cougars begin their season on Friday when they host St. Elizabeth at 4:30 p.m. at Cougar Field.

Everybody makes mistakes ... ! If there's something in this article you think should be corrected, or if something else is amiss, call editor Emilie Raguso at 510-459-8325 or email her at emilier@patch.com.