McMurray Era Kicks Off For Chabot Football

The Brett McMurray era as Chabot head football coach is ready to launch.
The first-year man will guide the young Gladiators against host Hartnell in Salinas at 1 p.m. Saturday in their season opener.
This marks McMurray’s first job as a head coach after an extensive career as an assistant with four-year programs.
McMurray, known for his well-rounded, player-first approach and developing a winning culture, started basically from scratch at Chabot after being hired on April 21.
The Glads have about 75 on the roster, 68 eligible for Week 1.
“I think we have a really competitive first group on offense and defense,” McMurray said on Friday. “The depth is still something that we need to build, obviously as you can expect starting with eight guys three months ago and getting to 68. We definitely have some guys that still need to develop a little bit.”
They have a “handful of really good bodies that haven’t played football before, so we’re teaching some really good athletes how to play football," he says.
The Glads will play their home opener on Sept. 6 against visiting Cabrillo. Kickoff is 1 p.m. at Mt. Eden High (Chabot’s stadium is undergoing reconstruction this season).
Staying healthy will be key for Chabot. If the ready-to-go guys can stay on the field, McMurray is looking for a successful season.
Chabot finished 4-6 last year, 1-4 in the American-Pacific-7 Conference, under former head coach Eric Fanene. Hartnell wound up 1-9, 0-6 in the American-Gold Coast.
What will McMurray tell his guys before the opener?
“The biggest thing is just play loose and comfortable and play fast,” McMurray says. “I’ve kind of challenged them to understand that on any given week it’s our culture vs. their culture. Have we done a good enough job of developing our standard and our culture and making sure that we’re gonna play the right way, do the thing that we need to do to win, be respectable opponents?”
He added that it’s about “playing the game they love, playing it fast and enjoying the moment.”
McMurray and his staff have made a good first impression at Chabot with their hard work and forward-thinking mindset.
The head man gives high marks to three solid freshmen linebackers.
“They’re all really good players, local guys,” McMurray says of athletic freshman Salesi Moala, an outside ‘backer out of Tennyson High, heady inside ‘backer Gerardo Zavala-Rangel (Newark Memorial) and Leki Vaka (Newark Memorial), a big-body outside linebacker who quickly established himself as playmaker.
“Those three guys are kind of the core unit of our linebackers who will be out on the field to start the game,” the coach said.
The defensive line will be packed with locals and some “pretty good players, a couple of returners,” McMurray says.
Offensively, he has been “happy with our skill positions. Our receivers and running backs are kind of the core of our offensive unit. We’re still trying to develop our offensive line, but I’m happy with the numbers that we’ve got. We’re at nine offensive linemen; we started with five or six early in the summer and fall,” the coach says.
The Glads have some big bodies and quality players on both lines. Freshman Esaia Vavao (St. Francis), whose dad played in the NFL, bolsters the defensive line, along with returner Titus Fua of San Francisco. JohnnyRay Stephens will be key at left tackle.
McMurray coached last season at Lake Forest College (Illinois) as linebackers coach, special-teams coordinator and recruiting coordinator. The Foresters were 10-1 overall, 9-0 in conference. The previous two seasons he coached at Kenyon College (Ohio), as defensive coordinator in 2023 and defensive line coach in 2022, after a brief stint at Chabot.
He also has had coaching stops at Sul Ross State in Alpine, Texas, and College of the Redwoods, Humboldt State, Southwest Minnesota State, and Bermidji State (Minnesota).
Now it’s go time for his Gladiators!