Q&A: Gonzales man behind the voice at McAllen stadium

McALLEN — Celso Gonzales has been the public address announcer at McAllen Veterans Memorial Stadium for 10 years. This season, Gonzales, a golf coach at McAllen Memorial for the last 21 years, has had the unique opportunity to watch his son Ben’s final home games as a high school football player from way atop the stadium. Ben is a center with the Mustangs.

Gonzales will miss the McAllen Rowe-McAllen High game on Friday to watch possibly his son’s final game when the Mustangs travel to take on the Donna Redskins in The Monitor’s Game of The Week on Friday at Bennie La Pride Stadium Memorial needs to win by 10 points or more to advance to the postseason.

RGVSports.com recently sat down with Gonzales.

Q: People at the McHi-Memorial game two weeks ago were calling it the greatest game they had ever watched. You were here as the PA. Was it is the best game you had ever seen?

A: That was the best game I had ever seen live as far as a high school football game. It was so exciting. You had the McHi fans leaving after Memorial scored, not knowing that the next play was going to be a touchdown from Nick Garza. Then you saw all the fans come back. You just saw the up to up for Memorial and the down to down for McHi and then all of a sudden it just switched positions.

Q: People seemed stunned after the game almost like no one won.

A: That was the way I felt too. There was no loser in this game. When both sides shook hands at the end of the game, both teams held their heads up high. It was just too bad somebody lost.

Q: There is no cheering in the press box. How difficult was it for you not to cheer during that game?

A: It was very hard. When Memorial scored with 21 seconds left, I left the room briefly just to say, ‘alright.’ It was never in front of anybody because I’m the public address announcer and you have to be unbiased. That is not always a given. There are a lot of homers. The visiting side doesn’t always feel good. I want to make sure when people leave the game that they left knowing there was no favoritism on either side. I hope I have instilled that in my announcing.

Q: Will someone be filling in for you this week?

A: I went to (McAllen ISD Athletic Director Poppy Rodriguez) and said, ‘Poppy its Ben’s last game and he’s a senior. It could be his last football game of his career and I would like to be there. I found someone to replace me. Would that be a problem?’ He said it was no problem. I’ll be in Donna and hopefully we will be successful and it won’t be my son’s last game.

Q: Do you have a prediction for the game?

A: If we come out play like we did against Rowe where the score was 28-0 before the first quarter even ended, it is going to be very hard to stop Memorial. I hope for a hard-fought game. I’m going to go out on the limb and hope that Memorial wins.

Peter Rasmussen covers District 30-5A football for Valley Freedom Newspapers. You can reach him at (956) 683-4448 or via e-mail at prasmussen@themonitor.com.