Q&A: C.J. Villegas makes move from Central to Brady Athletic Director and basketball coach
Brady ISD hired former Central High School head basketball coach C.J. Villegas to be its next athletic director and head basketball coach in June.
Villegas spent three years as the basketball coach at Central where he improved the team's record each year he was with the program. Before Central, he spent time coaching at Coleman, Trent, Hereford and Wolfforth Frenship. At Hereford, his longest tenure, he coached everything from basketball to football and even track. Since leaving Hereford, though, he spent the last 10 years focused on coaching basketball.
In one of his first decisions as an athletic director, Villegas hired Jaron Roberts as Brady's new head football coach on June 8. Roberts was most recently the defensive coordinator at Stamford, where in 2022, his defense allowed 15 points a game and helped the team finish with an 8-2 record.
Villegas sat down with the Standard-Times to talk about how he can make Brady's athletics more competitive in a historically tough District 2-3A Division II in football.
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What made the position at Brady so intriguing for you?
Well, just having the chance to be an athletic director has always been a career goal of mine and something that I've wanted to try and do. It just so happened that all the puzzle pieces fell into place and I was able to continue coaching as well as being an athletic director, which is a very unique situation. The more we talked, the more it fell into place and I'm excited to be here.
Obviously, Brady is in a really tough district. What are your initial plans to make Brady more competitive with teams such as Wall and Early in all athletics?
We just want to provide a culture in all of our programs that's about competing and doing the best we can by working extremely hard. We want to bring a mindset and an attitude that is focused on working hard and playing hard. We want all of our teams to be competitive and create a culture that Brady High School is proud of and a culture that the community and our players are proud of. So, no matter what sport that you play against Brady, you know that we're gonna be competitive and get after it.
Coach Rocky Feliciano, who took over as basketball coach at Central, had high praise for how you ran your program. What does it mean to have former assistants say that about you?
It's very humbling. It's something that I'm very proud of. I owe a lot of it to our players, it's really all of them, to be honest with you. And I know that (Coach Felciano) gave me high praise, but that's not something I look for. What I want for Brady is what I wanted for the Central basketball program, which is for people to be proud of it and that was the most important thing that I took into it. We wanted to be competitive, which they were, and we tried to teach them about hard work. We went to the weight room, we did conditioning programs and we just tried to play as a team in the fall, summer and spring. I was fortunate to work for a good coach in Paul Page at Frenship, and I've kind of just stolen a little bit of something from each program I've been at, and that's what kind of formed our program.
The basketball team finished fifth in the district last year, what type of team do you want to form at Brady?
I want to form exactly what I said earlier, just something that I'm proud of. Whenever I step out there and coach I just want our kids to play extremely hard. I want them to play team basketball, we're gonna defend at a high level and just put all of those pieces together. I expect a team that plays as a team, and I always tell my guys, whenever there are fans in the stands and when they get in their car and leave the gym, what are they saying about our team? I want the fans to say the things that we preach to the team like, "man those guys played hard," and "those guys played as a team, those guys are coachable and, man, they have great attitudes," it's little things like that. So, that's what I would hope you expect to see, and if it turns around, it turns around. I'm just gonna go in and do what I believe.
Why did you choose coach Jaron Roberts to be the head football coach?
It was a very unique situation. I combed around and searched through some resumés that were there when I took over the job at Brady. I called around a little bit on guys that were interested in head football positions, and he was one guy that came up at the top of all the phone calls I made. His name kept popping up and I know he hasn't been a head football coach, but he's been an offensive coordinator and a defensive coordinator for some successful football programs. He won state at Wellington High School as a coordinator and the most important thing was he felt like he fit. When I got on a phone call with him and then finally met him he fit a lot of the vision of what we want our football program to be.
This article originally appeared on San Angelo Standard-Times: Q&A: New Brady Athletic Director and basketball coach C.J. Villegas
