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CELESTE BLUE DEVILS FOLLOW MOTTO‘ DISCIPLINE OVER DESIRE’
By Alex Havardansky
Coming into the 2026 season, Celeste coach Demetrius Rector knows his team has some work to do.
Rector has been around Blue Devils football for 16 seasons and has seen various iterations of the team. Currently, Celeste is in somewhat of a developmental phase – finishing 1-9 last year – and hasn’ t had a winning record for two seasons.
Rector said that naturally with small schools like Celeste, teams go through cycles of having successful classes and then needing to do some retooling on a year-to-year basis.
However, the head coach thinks the program could be on the start of an upswing.
Rector said he’ s excited the school has enough student athletes participating this year that it can have a junior varsity level. as depth pieces for the roster to gain limited varsity level experience as well.
The coaching staff will also feature some new faces in Lee Valdez, who will serve as defensive coordinator, as well as David Pasternak, who will tend to the offensive line.
Those two coaches – alongside the remaining coaching staff – will help to build up the team on the field. However, Rector is looking for growth off the field just as much as on.
“ We’ re trying to build leaders,” Rector said,“ Everyone is a leader in a good way or a bad way, we’ re trying to build them to be of service and be selfless. It’ s not all about you it’ s about the team.”
“ It looks like for the first time in a while we’ ll have a JV,” Rector said.“ That’ s going to help. It’ s hard to build a program when you only have varsity because the younger guys aren’ t ready for varsity.”
Those players at the lower levels will have time to develop to help better fill out the roster long term and could also serve
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