Live Oak Classical School<\/a>, she got good news: Live Oak was starting a football team. For an avid sports fan and athlete like Garcia, a football team meant opportunity. But she also received some bad news that year: Her parents weren\u2019t going to let her play. Despite her best efforts, she couldn\u2019t sway them.<\/p>\nNow, eight years later, this Baylor sophomore is\u00a0doing something few other women in the country have ever done\u00a0— coaching varsity football. After accepting that she couldn\u2019t play football for Live Oak, Garcia\u00a0took on a\u00a0role as manager, a job she continued throughout her high school career. As Live Oak\u2019s football program grew, she grew with it, adding to her responsibilities as she mastered any task the coaches sent her way. That growth led to her becoming an assistant football coach for Live Oak last year.<\/p>\n
\u201cSports are a very big part of my life,\u201d Garcia\u00a0says. \u201cI\u2019ve always liked sports, and loved football. I love the ins-and-outs, the strategy. I just wanted to be a part of the football team, and I was able to be there from the beginning of the program. They never made me prove myself differently. It was always just, \u2018Aleena\u2019s here doing her job.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Her foremost responsibility is running the scout team offense. She breaks down film each week of the upcoming opponent, then instructs the scout team how they can\u00a0best play like the opponent to help prepare the defense for what\u2019s ahead. She also keeps stats and oversees equipment, making\u00a0sure the managers have everything they need. To accomplish all this, she gets up at 5 a.m. every day\u00a0to be at practice by 6. After practice, she turns her attention to her Baylor classes.<\/p>\n
\u201cAleena understands what we are trying to do,\u201d Live Oak head football coach Jordan Barker says. \u201cShe is solely responsible for charting our opponents’ plays for the scout team. She\u2019s an outstanding, hardworking person who is very loyal. When she finishes her education, she will be able to do anything she wants and be good at it — including coaching football, if she so desires.\u201d<\/p>\n
Like most high school coaches, Garcia’s\u00a0responsibilities don’t end with football; she’s also\u00a0an assistant coach for\u00a0Live Oak’s girls\u2019 basketball, baseball, and track and field teams. She\u00a0knows she wants coaching to be a big part of her future, and she\u2019s given a lot of thought to what it takes to be successful. She says she hasn\u2019t given as much thought to the significance of her role as a varsity coach. To her, being around the Live Oak football team doesn\u2019t seem so much groundbreaking as it does normal.<\/p>\n
\u201cI never really thought of it as breaking new ground,\u201d Garcia\u00a0explains. \u201cI\u2019ve always just been around the program. I grew up around it. But I realize that you don\u2019t see this everywhere. Coaching is my passion. I really love it. … I just look forward to getting up in the morning and trying to help the team.\u201d<\/p>\n
Just how well is Garcia\u00a0preparing her team to be ready for their opponents? The results speak for themselves. Last year, Live Oak reached the state title game<\/a>, and they\u2019re off to a 7-2 start this year as they strive\u00a0to win it all — thanks in part to this Baylor student.<\/p>\nSic \u2019em, Coach Garcia!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When Aleena Garcia was a 7th\u00a0grader at Waco\u2019s Live Oak Classical School, she got good news: Live Oak was starting a football team. For an avid sports fan and athlete like Garcia, a football team meant opportunity. But she also received some bad news that year: Her parents weren\u2019t going to let her play. Despite […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,7,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-athletics","category-extraordinary-stories","category-student-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17382\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Aleena](\"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/garcia-nov15.jpg\")
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