Right coach leads miracle turnaround for Westland Hialeah

It may be hard to believe that Westland Hialeah football coach Joe Gross and the late Tony Sparano, who took over as Miami Dolphins head coach in 2008, have something in common.

But they very much do.

Each inherited the “Titanic” and raised it from the bottom of the ocean to sail again.

Sparano orchestrated the greatest one-season turnaround in NFL history when the Dolphins went from a 1-15 disaster in 2007 to an 11-5 AFC East Division champion in 2008, Sparano just barely missing out in the voting for NFL Coach of the Year honors.

Sure it’s on a much smaller scale but in order to appreciate where you are you have to know where you’ve been. Gross inherited a Westland program a year ago that had total of three wins between 2013 and 2019.

It was so awful that there were whispers that the school should just shut the program down and focus on other sports. Wildcat players had to hear barbs on social media as their football program was referred to as “Wasteland Hialeah.”

Enter Gross and those days are gone.

The Wildcats, who began the turnaround a year ago going 4-3 (but 2-3 on the field as two games were forfeits) during a COVID-shortened season, took that momentum and have parlayed that into even more success in 2021.

The Wildcats (3-0) are an independent who haven’t played since Sept. 10 thanks to postponed games against Sunset and Mourning. What catches your eye is that, after an opening forfeit win over Hialeah-Miami Lakes, they crushed Hialeah and Miami Springs by 47-0 and 42-0 scores, respectively.

Westland Hialeah is now on the delivering end of blowouts.

So what happened? How could something that looked so desperately lost, a program that broke the all-time state record for consecutive losses by dropping 48 games between 2013 and 2018, have been rescued so fast?

A committed coach helps, but with transfer restrictions nearly out the window nowadays and kids able to go to school wherever they want, a coach who has a direct pipeline to talent.

That’s where Gross’ comes in. He was an an assistant coach under Telly Lockette and Roland Smith at Miami Central from 2010 to 2015. Central won five state titles and appeared in six state title games during that period.

So who does everybody thank for all of this? Perhaps Sebastian Carvalho.

After leaving to back to his native Long Island in 2016 to take a more lucrative job in the New York school system, Gross returned to South Florida a year later and wound up at Westland. But only in a teaching capacity as a Department Chair for Special Education.

“I thought my coaching days were over,” Gross said. “But then Tim Neal [who coached Westland Hialeah in 2019] left and the job came open. Sebastian Carvalho was a player on the team and he would always talk football with me all the time because he knew I was at Central all those years. He came at me one day and started pleading with me to take the job, which got me thinking and eventually when it was offered to me I took it.”

Gross will never forget his first team meeting.

“I walked in and there were a grand total of 12 kids in the room,” Gross said. “Our principal said to the kids “you can ask him any questions you want.’ After she left I turned around and said “All right fellas, first thing I’m going to tell you is that I’m going to be the one asking the questions. They all started laughing and it kind of broke the ice.”

Gross got to work on trying to sell the unsellable.

“There had to be a trust factor. Parents would ask me and I assured them that I was going to make sure that they’re kids were going to class on time and getting an education in a safe environment. You want your kid to be taught well on the field, which I think a lot of people have that trust in me.”

One of those players who came to play with Gross was Keon Adderley. A star 2023 prospect at wide receiver and defensive back, Adderley is actually getting a few looks from FBS schools UConn and Georgia Southern, a notion that would have been considered unthinkable at this progarm as short as two years ago.

“I played at Central as a ninth-grader but couldn’t get on the field so when Coach Gross contacted me, I jumped at the chance to get out on the field and play,” Adderley said. “We had to learn how to build a team all over again and figure out how to play with each other, but everything has worked out real well. We love playing for Coach Gross.”

Even after getting a team together preceding the 2020 COVID-shortened season, Gross still had to learn how to teach football to a lot of kids that perhaps had not had the best of instruction over time. “It was a mix of literally not going from A to B but going from A1 to A2 to A3 before we even got to B and finding out how to get all the way to get to X,Y,Z,” Gross said. “It was small steps and simplifying things but still trying to make sure they still had a full capacity and understanding of what was going on and have what I think was a pretty in-depth offensive and defensive playbook. The one thing that I picked up in my years of coaching is that a lot of times kids know what to do on a play but don’t necessarily know ‘why’ they do it.”

If anybody can appreciate the success of Wildcat football these days, it would be senior defensive lineman Abraham Francois-Harris. That’s because he is one of only three players on the team that was around a few years ago before Gross arrived when things were not so great.

“This is really something to be a part of,” Francois-Harris said. “When I came here my ninth-grade year, we had good coaches and all but nobody was really committed to the game like we are now. Everything the coaches do now is preach hard work. They’re going to show us tough love on and off the field, but they always say if we give them our time, they’re going to give us greatness back. I stayed with it and am really glad I did. It’s so much more fun now. It’s fun to running clock people now rather than getting running clocked like we used to.”

Gross will be the first to admit that his success today in his first venture as a head coach has everything to do with his days at Central and learning under one of the most successful programs in the country. “Any success I’ve had, you need to understand that it comes from everything I learned from those guys starting with (Telly) Lockette and then Roland (Smith) along with other guys who have moved on to other places,” Gross said. “I think I take a different trait from each different coach that I worked with. From structure and discipline to X’s and O’s and just the overwhelming knowledge of football.”

Gross also got smart and asked Smith and his staff if it would be okay if he took his Wildcat players over to Central to work out with them over the summer during 7-on-7’s and various other drills. “Westland Hialeah got themselves a great coach over there with Joe,” said Smith. “He’s doing a tremendous job. His kids worked out with us over the summer because Joe knew he had the recipe from myself and my staff on what it took to run a successful program. What he’s doing is some of the things we do here at Miami Central and taking it over there and the kids believe in him. I’m so proud of Joe and what he’s doing over there. I always saw those qualities in him and was excited for him when he told me he had gotten the job over there. I’m not surprised by this.”