Memorial grad prepping for Cotton Bowl

Alonso is currently pursuing his doctoral degree at the University of Florida, where he’s in his third season working with tight ends as a volunteer assistant coach. Florida will face Oklahoma in Wednesday’s Cotton Bowl.

Alsonso’s Manchester roots helped him land his current coaching position at Florida. He first connected with Florida head coach Dan Mullen — a former quarterback at Trinity High School — when Mullen was the head coach at Mississippi State.

“I hand wrote him a letter while I was (a graduate assistant coach) at Charlotte introducing myself, saying I was from Manchester and that I played at Memorial,” Alonso explained. “And I gave him some background on my very short coaching career at the time. He wrote me back and gave me some good advice: Work hard and everything will be rewarded with your work,’ and if there was anything he could help me with in the future to reach out to him. I took that as if I put myself in the right position he would be willing to help me out, which is exactly what happened.”

Alonso’s path to Florida is an interesting one, and one that took many turns. He was born in Colombia, but moved to New York City when he was young, and then moved to Manchester while he was in elementary school. He was steered toward football by longtime high school coach John Trisciani, who is now an assistant coach at Saint Anselm College.

Alonso’s playing career began with the Manchester Bears youth program.

“I didn’t really have any connection with the sport,” Alonso said. “I didn’t have an older brother or father who played … an uncle — none of that. Coach Trish was the first person to introduce me to American football with the Bears. I consider Coach Trish my mentor.”

Alonso, 28, played four seasons of high school football at Memorial. Dante Laurendi was Memorial’s head coach for his first two years, and Peter Colcord coached Alonso during his junior and senior seasons.

Alonso still has a photo of himself heading to practice at Memorial’s Chabot-McDonough Field. The photo, which ran in the Union Leader, was taken days before Memorial played Manchester Central in the Turkey Bowl during his senior season.

“Enthusiastic kid,” Laurendi recalled. “Leader from a very early age. Easy kid to coach. Extremely hard worker. I left before he finished his career there (Memorial), but you knew he was going to be good because of his work ethic. Tremendous amount of pride in Memorial and the program. That’s not easily done because we weren’t very successful back then, but you could tell this kid had great enthusiasm. You could tell back then it meant a lot to him.”

After leaving Memorial, Alsonso wanted to play college football and was a walk-on at West Virginia. That ended after two seasons, when West Virginia began to limit its walk-on spots to linemen only. He never got on the field at West Virginia.

Undeterred, Alonso transferred to the University of Hawaii. He didn’t play for the Rainbow Warriors, but did serve as a volunteer student assistant with the program. That’s when he caught the coaching bug.

“That’s where I got my feet wet,” Alonso said. “I thought, ‘This is phenomenal. This is what I want to keep going on for a while.’ I had never considered coaching before that.

“What I tell people about Hawaii is we went into the office and did what we had to do in the morning and then went to practice, but by 12:30, 1 o’clock my feet were in Waikiki sand.”

After Alonso spent a year at Hawaii, his family moved from Manchester to Charlotte, N.C. He reached out to the Carolina Panthers and, still eager to coach, landed a position as a football operation intern for their training camp.

He ended up returning to West Virginia to complete his undergraduate degree, and then coached as a graduate assistant at Wingate University and UNC-Charlotte.

While he was working as a grad assistant, Alonso formed the Audible Football Camp, a non-profit organization that educates people in other countries about American football. “Every summer I’ve dedicated time to traveling abroad and going to football communities in other parts of the world who are trying to learn the sport — trying to pick it up on their own,” Alonso said. “This organization is kind of an agency where they can get resources and learn. We do football camps. We do clinics for coaches.

“At one point in my career, I’m hoping to make that my full-time gig. Right now it’s my side gig because I have to get my experience on the field coaching here in the States. I’d like to be in a position at some point where I’m either in my own organization or another organization that’s going to give me the capacity to work with American football teams internationally. That’s another big passion of mine within the game — spreading the sport in places it’s never been before.

“Don’t get me wrong. I’m really passionate about pursuing that coaching career here in the States. I want to be able to coach at the highest level I can coach at, but I think I could make a greater impact on the sport if I’m involved with their development rather than developing myself, if that makes sense.”

Alonso said football remains appealing to him because it’s an inclusive sport.

“Football is unique in that it caters to a lot of people,” he said. “You have people who are tall, who are short, who are fast, who are slow, strong, weak. A lot of people can play this sport. When you go to countries where soccer is dominating, there’s an exclusion of kids who can’t play the sport. You don’t have enough endurance, you’re not able to run fast enough or you don’t have the right body size.”

Alsonso is on schedule to earn his doctorate at Florida by 2022. Then he’ll weigh his options. He could pursue a full-time career in coaching, or take his Audible Football Camp to another level. “He wanted to be a great football player and he worked hard,” Colcord said when asked what he remembered about Alonso when both were at Memorial. “He was very self-motivated and driven to be a top-notch football player. I could see great things happening for him because of his dedication.

“When he put his sights on something, he worked real hard for it, so I’m not surprised that he’s done all this. He’s that type of kid.”