After four years at the helm of Coyote football, Tony Uebelhardt has been let go by Castaic High School.
The athletic department made the decision and told Uebelhardt Wednesday that it wished to take the football program in a different direction.
The former head coach led the Coyotes to a 2-8 finish in their first varsity season, which ended less than two months ago. Uebelhardt was proud of what his team was able to do in such a short time, especially during a pandemic.
“I was only there for four years and a year and a half of that was COVID,” said Uebelhardt. “COVID hit after our first season and trying to build a program during that was hard. For a brand-new school and program, it really hurt us. Now finishing our first varsity season, with the talent we had. It’s rough.”
Uebelhardt has coached for nearly two decades at several different Southern Section programs. He has spent the past decade coaching in the Foothill League after six years at Hart and four with Castaic. Uebelhardt is nonetheless proud of his team’s effort and fight to the end this season.
“It was a great group of kids, they worked hard for us and I’ll never forget that,” said Uebelhardt.
Anyone who’s been part of a team understands the bonds are created during a season, let alone four. There were a lot of moving pieces involved in getting Castaic in the right direction.
“For any coach, you know that those bonds last a lifetime, especially my offensive line coach, coach [Robin] Pool, who’s been with me since the start,” said Uebelhardt. “You’ll always have those relationships with those guys because you go into battles with those guys, those are the guys you lean on. And the players, we had a lot of great players who did a lot of great things and I wish them nothing but the best.”
Castaic football will now be in search of its second head coach in school history after just one varsity campaign. The program will attempt to find what they believe to be the right piece to the puzzle to get the Coyotes into Foothill League contention.
Castaic Athletic Directors Mark Overdevest and Jibri Hodge were unavailable for comment at the time of this publication.
