Sand Creek names Ricky Lobato as new football coach

Sand Creek has a found the man to take over for David Ramirez. Tuesday afternoon, the school tweeted out that Ricky Lobato has been named the new football coach.

Lobato was on the staff at Coronado last year as the special teams coordinator and h-backs coach. He has previous experience on the coaching staff at Sand Creek where was the running backs coach and special teams coordinator in 2016.

“He’s energetic and passionate about what he does he has a plan for growth,” Sand Creek athletic director Brian Petzold said. “He’s someone that can move the program forward with long sustainable success.”

This will be Lobato’s first head coaching job and he is anxious to dive into the experience head-first.

“I’m looking forward to getting into it with the kids and learning from them and helping them learn,” Lobato said. “I want to get the wheels going again at Sand Creek.”

He takes over for Ramirez who stepped down at the conclusion of the 2017 season to pursue a career in educational administration.

“With coach Ramirez I learned a ton of stuff about high expectations and holding kids accountable,” Lobato said. “Even with coach (Monte) Gutowski (at Coronado). My football knowledge has exploded being around those two guys.”

There are aspects of what Ramirez left behind that Petzold believes Lobato can build on while also putting his own twist to bring success to a program that hasn’t experienced a winning season since 2013.

“I kind of always look at that as there are always things we can build on what’s happened in the past,” Petzold said. “We’ll take the strong things that we have in place that Dave put there and grow from there. Dave did some things well that will allow us to take a step forward without having to go back to square one.”

The move comes a day after Liberty announced the hiring of Erick Gossage as its football coach. The coaching carousel continues to turn as teams look forward to diving into spring football.