Moving on up in BAKERSFIELD
Mora grad Aaron Chávez heads up hoops program at California college
While still attending college at New Mexico Highlands University, Aaron Chávez got a boost with the start of his basketball coaching career from West Las Vegas icon David Bustos.
A 2000 Mora grad, Chávez felt like coaching was in his blood since his dad was a coach, as was his cousin and next door neighbor Miranda Serna, who was an assistant women’s coach at Oklahoma State before dying in a plane crash in 2011.
“I owe him so much,” Chávez said of his mentor. “I can never repay coach Bustos for giving me my first job. If coach Bustos didn’t hire me, you would never have heard about Aaron Chávez.”
Indeed, Chávez has made a name for himself in the coaching ranks, especially out in Bakersfield, California, where he has been an assistant men’s basketball coach for 15 years.
And he’s just recently been named interim head coach and director of basketball operations at Bakersfield College for a year after longtime coach Rich Hughes decided to take year’s sabbatical.
But is all started with the Dons, Chávez said.
“He’s the ultimate professional,” he said of Bustos. “He’s a very good coach. Very knowledgeable. His practices are well run. If you want to see how good somebody coaches, go watch practices. He cares for the student-athlete. He’s a salt of the earth person. I can never repay West Las Vegas. And I can never repay coach Bustos.”
After three years on the Dons sidelines, and while also earning a bachelor’s degree in mass communication and a master’s in human performance in sport from NMHU, Chávez decided it was time get into coaching fulltime in the college game, a task easier said than done.
“On the men’s side, it’s very competitive to get into college coaching,” he said. “I wrote 675 letters to college coaches across the country. I had one coach that offered me a job, Christopher Wood at Bard College in upstate New York.”
That was no easy gig at the D-III school in Annandale on the Hudson.
“I lived on an air mattress in a little attic in somebody’s house,” Chávez said with a chuckle.
A year of that and he was ready to move back to sunnier climes closer to home.
“I wanted to get closer to New Mexico,” Chávez said. “I like the East Coast, but it’s a lot different than the West Coast or the Southwest.”
Using a contact at Highlands, coach Lynn Kennedy, Chávez was able to connect with Hughes at Bakersfield, a well-regarded junior college with an enrollment of about 30,000. The HughesChávez connection has gone 267-172 at Bakersfield and won three Western State Conference junior college titles. And perhaps even more telling of the duo’s success with the Renegades, 59 players have gone on to four-year programs.
“It’s been enjoyable to be a part of so many wins. So enjoyable,” he said. “I just work hard.”
Moving west, so he could be closer to family and get his chile fix, has been tremendous.
“It’s been the best career decision in my life is working for coach Hughes,” Chávez said. “I’ve got a phenomenal boss. I don’t care what anybody says and they may laugh at this statement, but put the guy at any level of basketball and give him an even playing field, and he’s going to have great success. He’s an exceptional coach. A really good X and Os guy.”
With this step into the top spot — which hasn’t quite sunk in yet as he’s still using his old office — Chávez said it’s a success for all of northern New Mexico.
“There are so many people from Las Vegas and Mora, New Mexico, that always believed in me,” he said. “I’m going to make it happen for all of us. It was just one of those things, you wish you were home so you could see the human reaction to this. More than anything, I’m just happy for the people back home. Everybody, not only my sibling and my parents, there are so many people in New Mexico and northern New Mexico who have sacrificed to achieve my dream. I will forever be grateful. It’s something for all of us to be proud of. I want to share my success with my people.”