Photo credit: KXAN News
This feature is presented by the Crusader Football Alumni Association
When Westlake head football coach Tony Salazar watches his highly-ranked Chaparrals take to the gridiron each week, he cannot help but draw the similarities between his current team of state title contenders, and the college program up the road Belton, where he starred as a safety for four seasons from 2000-2003.
Even during pregame warmups, the laser focus towards the task at hand is present. His quarterbacks and receivers play a game of pitch-and-catch, with receivers running routes and quarterbacks firing passes on point. Not one throw is missed. Not one ball is dropped.
That is the level of excellence that the Westlake program demands. And Salazar, who greatly contributed to the early years of UMHB Football’s rise to the top of D-III, is no stranger to the pressure of living up to the standard. In fact, the second-year head coach has come to embrace it.
“For the last several years, besides this year, we’ve almost mirrored the exact same schedule,” Salazar said, referencing the deep playoff runs of Westlake and UMHB. “We are state champions, they are national champions. We go to the state semifinals, they go to the national semifinals. It’s pretty crazy.”
The playoff run in the present year continues for Salazar’s squad on Saturday afternoon in Pflugerville, where the Chaparrals face a very familiar Lake Travis team with a ticket to the state semifinals on the line. Long known as one of the premier Central Texas high school football rivalries, the stakes cannot be any higher in this postseason meeting between the neighboring communities.
“In the playoffs, every week ends up being the biggest game of the year,” Salazar noted. “But this one has a little more significance. There’s no doubt. We’re not going to shy away from it.”
In the regular season meeting between the two programs on Sept. 22, Westlake kept its undefeated record–now at 13-0–intact, beating the Cavaliers on the road, 20-14. Close duels have contributed to this rivalry’s continuing history. Of course, the fact that both programs are still playing in December is the central aspect to the foundation of the history between Lake Travis and Westlake. Both teams are very good, and have been for the better part of two decades.
“Literally, the communities border each other, and one neighborhood goes to Lake Travis, and the one right across from it goes to Westlake. Obviously, [Lake Travis] has won some state championships, and at Westlake, since Todd Dodge came and brought me along and the majority of this staff, [we’ve had lots of success]. We’re coming off a 14-1 season and trying to get back to that point. That’s a week away if we can win this football game. That’s been our driving motivation.”
An intense work ethic has helped breed that consistency as of late at Westlake, starting with Dodge, who brought Salazar along as his defensive coordinator when the former UT quarterback took over the legendary program in 2014. It was the same type of work ethic that Salazar showed upon arrival in Belton as a freshman, when he won a starting job in the Crusader secondary and immediately solidified himself as a key contributor. By the time of the season’s conclusion, he was voted American Southwest Conference Freshman Defensive Player of the Year.
An ASC Defensive Player of the Year honor followed after his senior campaign in 2003, and went along with his AFCA First Team All-America honor. In 2016, the Crusader Football Alumni Association inducted him into the Hall of Honor, further recognizing what he brought to The Cru during his time on the field.
“2000 was my freshman class, and that’s when I felt like we had that core nucleus that you need in a program to be consistent,” Salazar recalled. “You need that kind of a group to understand the work ethic, be at practice everyday, not be distractions for the team. We had guys who stayed with it for four years and trained up the next class that was coming behind.”
Adversity was dealt with along the way. UMHB nearly made the postseason in 2000, if not for a disappointing slew of missed opportunities in the second-to-last game of the year against Hardin-Simmons. The Cru finished with a 9-1 record, the only blemish being a 21-7 loss in Abilene. Salazar still vividly remembers the emotions of that contest, and in the 19 years as a coach that have followed for the Dripping Springs native, he has had a few flashbacks in various games. Perhaps the most notable came in the 2015 state title game against North Shore, when Westlake’s potential game-winning field goal was blocked, sending the game into overtime, where North Shore emerged with a 21-14 win.
Those moments of disappointment come with the highs of victory, Salazar says. But what sets a program like Westlake’s apart is the response to that disappointment. UMHB, especially in the early years of its existence, very much embodied the same type of response, starting the establishment of the Code of The Cru following the 1999 campaign. It was essentially a commitment to upholding a standard of excellence, built upon a few key principles, which had enormous impact when it came to the unification of the team starting in the fall of 2000.
“It was a much-needed roadmap for our program,” Salazar said. “Coach Fredenburg set those standards and put the unity council in place. The Code of The Cru isn’t just words. They’re actions. They’re the intent of a program to be elite.”
And it is many of those principles on which Salazar leads the Chaparrals into Saturday’s highly-anticipated playoff contest.
The way in which Westlake views the progression of a season is in three distinct phases, or “landmarks”, as Salazar says. The ultimate goal is to reach all three such landmarks by the time the final horn sounds on the season.
“Our goal when we start the season is that we want to win a district championship. Kind of like how UMHB focuses on winning its conference championship. Being a great team, you have to schedule the other best teams in the state or in the country. That’s what people need to know. I have to schedule Katy, or North Shore, or these other amazing state championship teams in non-district. Nobody else wants to play.
“To be the man, you have to beat the man. And to beat the man, you have to play him a few times and have a heartbreak like we had at UMHB in the early years. Then you learn how to win. And you do it by playing good teams.
“Then the second thing we talk about is practicing on Thanksgiving. If we make it there, that’s usually the Round of 16, and you look around, and there’s a bunch of other good teams sitting at home. And the last thing is obviously winning a state championship. You can’t be tired of the work or tired of the grind. The road to the top is so hard, but it feels so good. People who have been up there and seen the view understand that.”
Salazar’s coaching career has been shaped by legendary coaches in Fredenburg and Dodge, who both, at various points, helped guide him to new heights. He speaks highly of what he learned along the way from both, and it has contributed to his success as a head coach.
“Pete was like a father figure to me for about eight years of my life,” Salazar noted. “He was so trusting and loyal to me. And it’s the same with Coach Dodge. He’s coached in nine state championship games and won seven of them. He’s the innovator of so much offense. Growing up, my background was defense, so when I had the chance to pair up with Coach Dodge, I watched and learned. My defense went up against his offense in practice everyday, and I feel like that was the ultimate teacher.”
He initially connected with Dodge at Marble Falls High School, which was followed by the move to Westlake. Ascending to the rank of head coach had long been a goal of Salazar’s, though he was unsure when, if ever, that dream would come to fruition.
“I got turned down several times to be a head coach,” Salazar said. “Nobody ever gave me the time. After being the defensive coordinator at Leander for four years, I had the opportunity to go apply for head coaching jobs. My first goal was to be a head coach by the time I was 30. I started the journey, and it didn’t happen, but I didn’t give up. But I kept hearing that I was second on the list and it got to the point where I was tired of chasing a job. It goes back to controlling what you can control. I said, ‘I’m going to work so hard and so good that I’m not going to give anybody a choice but to hire me.’
That call finally came when Dodge announced he would retire following the 2021 season. And for Salazar, it fulfilled a longtime dream. He takes great pride in the journey it has taken to reach this point in his career, and that passion will be evident as Westlake takes center stage in the 6A Texas High School Football Playoffs at 2 p.m. on Saturday afternoon.
“I’m a member of the Texas High School Hispanic Coaches Association, and there’s not many high-profile jobs with a guy that looks like me at the helm,” Salazar said. “I remember dreaming of being the head coach at Westlake, driving down the road and seeing the big stadium and thinking, ‘I want to be the coach there one day.’
“Lo and behold, here we are.”
