When Dave Eastham was playing football at Youngstown State University, he was under the tutelage of College Football Hall of Fame coach Jim Tressel.
After Eastham started coaching himself — first at his alma mater, Alemany High School, and then Notre Dame High School — he said he used Tressel’s “The Winner’s Manual” to get himself ready.
Then, Eastham, a Santa Clarita native, took a break from coaching and got into the strength and conditioning business, which is how he became acquainted with Trinity Classical Academy.
“A few years back, I had a gym right next door to Trinity, and I donated it for their Imago Dei program, which is their special needs school,” Eastham said in a recent phone interview.
Eastham eventually helped put together a weight room for the Valencia-based Christian private school. He then was asked to be the school’s strength and conditioning coach for all varsity sports, a gig that led him to become an assistant coach for Mike Parrinello’s football team before the start of the 2023 season.
The Trinity Knights football team went 2-8 in Eastham’s first season on the staff as they dealt with what Parrinello has described as a tough Mesquite League schedule.
In Eastham’s second season on staff, the Knights went a perfect 10-0 in the regular season and captured the Cottonwood League title.
But after seeing both of his children graduate, Parrinello retired following the 2024 season, leaving the head coaching job open for the first time in well over a decade.
“With him retiring, he told me, ‘Hey, I think that you should take over the program,” Eastham said. “And he told the athletic director that, apparently the athletic director agreed, and they asked me if I want to be head coach, which to me is a blessing.”
It’s the first time Eastham will be a head coach, but he said with Tressel’s wisdom guiding him — the two have kept in touch over the years — he’s setting out to build Trinity’s own version of a “winner’s manual.”
Saying football is “one of the greatest things that a boy can do to learn about life,” Eastham is hopeful that Trinity can be the place that he can impart some of the wisdom he’s learned over the years.
“I just believe that they’re moving in the right direction in terms of trying to raise good men, you know,” Eastham said. “I think that their values and their morals align with mine.”
While he wants to help his players grow as people, he said he also wants to win.
To do that, Eastham has to find ways to replace two key cogs in the Trinity offense in quarterback Noah Visconti and John Carlson, who played seemingly everywhere for the Knights this past season.
The two seniors are set to graduate at the end of the school year, with Visconti leaving as the program’s all-time passing leader with 5,967 passing yards. Carlson was also a standout on defense.
“Last year, we had a perfect regular season, and those are big shoes to jump into,” Eastham said. “But, you know, I think that you have to always challenge yourself. And I look forward to work on that challenge. We have a ton of challenges here at a small school. I mean, we have maybe 200 kids in our high school, and less than 100 of them are boys.”
Trinity is set to return a few pieces from its perfect campaign. Patrick Cherry, Hudson Sweitzer, Thomas Heinrich and Micah Spring all earned all-Cottonwood League honors and are set to return next year as seniors.
Aiden Visconti and Andrew Carlson also earned all-league honors as a freshman and sophomore, respectively.
