The son has his father’s facial expression, his intensity and his passion for all things football, particularly in the trenches. What Carmelo Ewing does not share with his Monterey Trail High School football coach/father T.J. Ewing is his considerable bulk. The coach is a bear of a man. He turns heads in the weight room when he settles into the bench press.
The kid is slight of build but he is slithery, crafty and driven. He has to be, at all of 5-foot-7 and “149 pounds,” the son said with a laugh Thursday night. The senior team captain and starting center also has this on his pop: a shock of curly hair. Coach Ewing hasn’t had such a luxury in years.
Father and son were all grins because life is good in the Ewing fold and with the Mustangs. After beating Burbank 56-0 in a Metropolitan Conference contest at Mark Macres Stadium, the No. 3 Mustangs ran their winning streak to five. They are 5-2 overall after opening the season with losses to Northern California powers Folsom and De La Salle of Concord, though, true to form, the Mustangs competed to the end in those setbacks.
To understand Monterey Trail football is to know that the Mustangs strive to control the line of scrimmage and to run teams ragged out of the veer offense. Camelo is in the thick of that as he handles the ball first and then blocks. Despite his size, he doesn’t get thrown around.
Against Burbank, the Mustangs rushed for 279 yards and had 354 yards total. Jervin Navarro rushed for 123 yards and two touchdowns, all in the first half, and Vontrelle Waffer had 65 yards, two touchdown runs and recovered a fumble in the end zone for a score. The second half was a running clock.
Young Ewing grew up around football, as constant at Monterey Trail practices as helmets and water bottles. But it’s not easy being the son of a coach, particularly one as demanding as Coach Ewing. In fact, Ewing isn’t so sure he’d want to play for himself.
Of coaching his son, he laughed in saying, “It’s a nightmare! It’s a weird vortex coaching your kid, but I’m proud of him. He knows the expectations, the accountability of this sport. I’m not easy to play for.”
Said the son, “It’s cool.” He added that there are perks to playing for pop.
“If I have a question about football, I don’t have to wait like everyone else,” he said. “I can just go, ‘Hey Dad! Help me with this!’”
He added, “Dad will compliment me on plays and he’ll get on me, too, like, “Melo! Come here! Get better!’ There are ups and downs to this, but I’m not hating him for it.”
The love and bond is clearly there, and it’s also one shared by assistant coaches Rick Arcuri and David Coronado and their sons. Arcuri’s son is the Mustangs’ starting quarterback, Vince Arcuri, who replaced graduated All-Metro quarterback brother Frank Arcuri. David’s son, Christian Coronado, is a linebacker/quarterback for the Mustangs, a sophomore and budding star.
“It’s tough coaching your kid,” coach Coronado said. “But it’s fun. It’s every coach’s goal to coach their son.”
Carmelo learned a great deal from wrestling, his father said.
“He’s learned a lot about resilience, determination, stick-to-itness, that thinking of ‘I’ll come back and bring it again and again,” Coach Ewing said. “It’s a never-say-die attitude. That’s what he does. We have a lot of kids like that.”
Carmelo Ewing isn’t completely consumed with football. He is a voracious reader. He aspires to write fiction with an affinity for science fiction. Of reading, he said, “I do so aggressively.”
He added, “I didn’t get a cellphone until I was a junior. My entertainment was reading. When my parents would ground me a few years ago because I’d get lazy with a class and get a bad grade, they didn’t have any electronics to take away from me. They took my books. There was my Dad picking them all up and moving them into another room, and I’m, ‘I want to read!’”
Carmelo was a receiver when he first got into tackle football because, “I was the small, skinny kid.” Then one day, when he was 12, the starting center for a Junior Mustangs team had to pull out of the game, ill.
“All of a sudden, they needed a center, and Melo raises his hand and says, ‘I’ll do it!’” coach Ewing said. “Loved it. I’ll never forget it.”