The crowd roaring, the band blasting, and the ball flying through the air is the essence of Friday night lights — the essence of Coach Blake Nesrsta. Driven by a passion for football, Mr. Nesrsta was welcomed as the school’s new offense coordinator and Pathways teacher.
After growing up in Marble Falls and graduating from Texas State University in 2005, Mr. Nesrsta taught at Freeman High School, Langham Creek High School, and Travis High School, accumulating 21 years of experience.
“Coach [Derek] Ward got this job and I started to come over and work with the other coaches, so it’s been a long and ongoing process,” Mr. Nesrsta said. “This is going to be something that goes on well past this season as far as continuing to build this program and the vision that we put out there.”
Mr. Nesrsta also teaches Pathways, a class based on building foundational skills not often taught in core classes. These curated skills aim to help graduates succeed past high school, particularly in college and the workforce.
“The structure of it all is lessons or our soft skill lessons and things like that, where we’re working on things like putting a planner together [or] organizational skills” Mr. Nesrsta said. “There’s an entire curriculum for this that we’ve put together that will address those things in a brief and digestible way, but we hope to give them some value too in those life lessons.”
Mr. Nesrsta found his passion for football with the Dallas Cowboys and Texas Longhorns when he was four; for him, the game clicked, and he knew he wanted to pursue the game as an adult. Now the Offense Coordinator for Warrior football, he looks forward to continuing to improve.
“The main thing is that we continue to improve and embrace the direction that we’re going as a program,” Mr. Nesrsta said. “So far, that’s been 100% the case. Our guys are 100% on board with what we’re trying to do. [We did] some great things the first couple of weeks of the regular season, all the way back in March.”
With the regular season now in full swing, Mr. Nesrsta aims to put out a physical offense, something that Westwood has lacked in previous years. By reflecting on the first couple of games in September, he is able to identify ways to further establish a well-rounded Westwood offense.
“We want to always establish the run and make sure that they have to defend the entire field,” Mr. Nesrsta said. “We want to make sure that we are giving opportunities to our playmakers to go out there and make those plays and stretch the field. We’ve been very efficient in our run game, and then we’ve been very explosive in our passing game up to this point.”
Mr. Nesrsta aims for consistency with the team. Despite Westwood’s notorious reputation in the football world, he is optimistic on establishing an upwards trend. To him, improvement is key.
“I think that part of [getting better] is to understand the tools of your craft and focus on those things,” Mr. Nesrsta said. “Don’t worry about anything else. Worry about the process of getting better, and do your job better than anybody else can do it. If that’s your focus, if you’re focused on every single detail, obsessing over every single detail of your job, then the whole gets better because all of the parts have gotten better.”
