Coach Andres Sepulveda is entering his first year as one of the five physical education teachers at Van Nuys High School as well as the school’s baseball coach.
I took a seat with Coach Sepulveda for five minutes to get to know him better and ask what he is passionate about and what important life lessons he’s learned in his time as a coach.
How do you balance your personal and work life?
“Unfortunately, a lot of P.E. teachers and coaches don’t really get a chance to do that. For me, my balance is working out and training. That’s my reset as soon as I get home. I don’t bring any of my work home at all. It’s one of my rules.”
What is a cause you are passionate about?
“I would say physical fitness and nutrition at the high school level. High school athletes, especially in public schools, do not have a strength and conditioning coach or an athletic training coach. They also don’t have a nutritionist on campus, and I think a lot of students out here in the Los Angeles area go to public schools because they can’t afford to go to a private school. I think those students need more attention, and I think it’s a shame that the district can’t provide that coach or that teacher for them because they don’t get that attention at home, and they’re not going to be able to get that through a doctor.”
What’s the most memorable travel experience you’ve had?
“I would say my most memorable travel experience would be when I went on a summer vacation to Arizona. In the span of a weekend, I went to Vegas, I went to Zion National Park, I went to see the Grand Canyon and Joshua Tree. It was all on the weekend, and it was just good to kind of go see nature itself, a little bit more animals, like deer, bears etc. I loved it because it’s good to kind of just be awake, especially from Los Angeles, just a different life.”
What’s a life lesson you have learned outside of the classroom?
“How to be independent and do things yourself. only because if you’re learning skills on your own, then you don’t have to depend on other people as much, and then when somebody does provide help and stuff like that, you’re a little bit more grateful. At the end of the day, once you decide to have a family and stuff like that, you’re gonna have to learn how to work on your house, or do your own taxes, or do X, Y and Z, and it’s good to just already know that stuff.”
If you could have dinner with anyone living or dead, other than family members, who would it be? And what would you talk about?
“It would have to be Jesus. I know some people are 50/50, some people are probably gonna be like, that’s a dumb answer. Then some people are gonna be like, oh, well, he’s not a real person. I think for me, just because of my faith, I have questions and I would love to have that conversation with him. I’d like to ask just simple things like the meaning of life, how we get better, how we can help each other in a world like this. I think that would be impactful enough for me to keep myself going. In the Scripture, it says to be the light for other people around you.”
