Prep football notes: Remembering Maddie Ochoa and Monty Maxwell; Dave Hoskins retires
The start of the new year was an especially difficult time for those mourning the losses of unsung anchors to their high school football programs.
Maddie Ochoa, the inspiring, spirited and courageous rallying point for Twelve Bridges High School of Lincoln, died after her long battle with leukemia. She was 19.
Ochoa was the older sister of Rhinos junior lineman Nick Ochoa, and they were moved by each other. Maddie cheered her brother even when so weakened that it was difficult to get around, saying last fall, “It’s so good for me to watch my brother play. It makes me happy.”
A 2018 graduate of Valley Christian Academy in Roseville, Maddie Ochoa was a three-sport prep athlete. She batted .600 and went 10-3 as the ace pitcher for VCA her senior season before attending Sierra College. In an early-season prep football game last fall against host Wheatland, Ochoa was honored, despite it being Wheatland’s homecoming game. It was sportsmanship at its finest. The color orange, which represents the fight against leukemia, was everywhere. The only thing brighter that night was Ochoa’s smile.
Wheatland displayed orange balloons and ribbons to honor Ochoa, invited her onto the field for the pregame coin toss and welcomed her to participate in the halftime homecoming parade. Players and coaches from both teams hugged her before and after the game. Many presented her with roses.
This sort of community and campus support also played out for home volleyball matches at Twelve Bridges, where students wore shirts that read “#FightLikeMaddie.” Twelve Bridges football coach Chris Bean was moved by all of it, and her plight, saying, “it was so much bigger than a game.”
Remembering Monty
Longtime area football coach Monty Maxwell, a 1986 graduate of Vacaville High who coached for years at Inderkum, died from complications of a stroke. He was 54.
Maxwell was so beloved at Vacaville in the 1980s that late, great coach Tom Zunino named a defensive position after him — Monty Backer.
Maxwell was known to have an open-door policy at his Sacramento home for players to come visit, break down film, talk about the challenges of life or have a meal. He engineered food drives and was a family man.
Hoskins bows out
Dave Hoskins is stepping away from football coaching.
Hoskins has been a fixture in local coaching since 1967 at Christian Brothers, back when he was “tall, dark and handsome,” as he likes to say.
The mind still wants to teach the fundamentals of blocking and tackling, he said, but the body is not always so willing. Fifty-six years of coaching will do that to a man, including head coaching stints at Valley and Elk Grove, where he was deeply involved in powerhouse teams.
Valley’s 1995 team went 12-1 and remains the best in program history. While co-coaching with Ed Lombardi at Elk Grove, Hoskins helped the Herd go a combined 28-1 in 1997 and 1998, winning two Sac-Joaquin Section Division I championships with two of the best teams in area history. When Lombardi left the program, Hoskins kept the Herd rolling, including a 14-0 team in 2001 that featured just one scholarship player — receiver Tony Kays, who went to UC Davis.
The foundation of his success was strength and conditioning and line play. Hoskins mixed in humor, too, of course, insisting he was too educated to coach football and instead should have been a rocket scientist or engineer.
An early 1960s center at Sacramento State, Hoskins was an assistant coach working with offensive linemen at a number of schools over the last 20 years, including Christian Brothers, Cosumnes Oaks, Capital Christian, Sheldon and, last fall, at Franklin. He was on the coaching staff at Sacramento State in 1988 under head coach and close pal Bob Mattos when the Hornets reached the NCAA Division II semifinals. Hoskins also coached for years in the annual Pig Bowl charity game.
“It’s been a great ride,” said Hoskins, who may dabble in area media work next fall to stay involved in the game.
Hoskins coached eight players who became NFL starters: Robert Awalt, Lance Briggs, Rae Carruth, Jerry DeLoach, Curt DiGiacomo, Charles Mann, Eason Ramson and Kenny Wiggins.
