Tuesday, May 25, 2010 10:13 PM EDT
By MATT STRAUB and JOHNNY J. BURNHAM
SOUTHINGTON — Southington’s football team used to have trouble tackling D.J. Hernandez. Now the Blue Knights have the Bristol native on their side.
Hernandez, who starred at Bristol Central and then at UConn, was named Southington’s football coach Tuesday, replacing Bill Mella, who left the team to take a job on Wesleyan’s staff.
Hernandez, who once held nearly ever passing record for the Rams before Matt Coyne came along, once rushed for 221 yards against Southington during his senior year. Now he hopes to help keep the Knights an annual state title contender like Mella and Jude Kelly did before him.
“I think we went through an extensive process and we had some very talented and viable candidates,” Southington Athletic Director Eric Swallow said. “D.J. did an exceptional job of presenting his ideas and vision for Southington High school football.”
Hernandez, a three-year captain at UConn who started with the Huskies as a quarterback and moved to wide receiver, was an assistant under Mella last year and knows the inner workings of the program.
“He has the strong core value system we wanted,” Swallow said. “An advantage for him was that he worked with the program this year as an assistant coach. The student-athletes knew him and were comfortable with him.”
Swallow was comfortable with Hernandez as well. Swallow and the rest of the search committee believes he will be a big part of the long-term success of Southington football.
“You can never predict what’s going to happen tomorrow, but I think he views this as a long-term commitment,” Swallow said. “Not to stay that Bill didn’t, but we think D.J. is committed to helping this program go forward and continue the success Bill had here.”
While having a big name who might be able to attract more players to the program doesn’t hurt, Swallow said the committee looked at Hernandez’s qualifications and his presentation, not his name.
“I look at it from the standpoint of wanting someone who can lead the program,” Swallow said. “He has leadership skills and if that can attract others into the program, great. But I look at him as a leader who can help keep this program going in the right direction.”
Hernandez will be formally introduced Thursday in a teleconference.
He will be speaking from Austria, where he now plays professionally with the Carithian Black Lions of the Austrian Football League.
Last summer he served not only as the team’s quarterback but also as its offensive coordinator. Carinthian posted one of the league’s most explosive offensive attacks. He is now the team’s head coach and recently had a game where he ran the ball 17 times for 104 yards as well as threw for 126 more and two scores.
In his last game against Southington, Bristol Central won 37-31. If Hernandez does this job as well as he plays, the Knights shouldn’t be losing too many games in the years to come.
