Valley Made: Small Town. Big Rob. Bigger Heart.

By Roy Rivas | DITV

Ruby has no trouble picking her son out on a football field. He is usually the big one driving somebody backward.

And she is absolutely the mom enjoying it.

“Oh, yep, the one that dropped your kid. Yep, that was mine,” she said, laughing about the social media videos of proud mothers watching their sons play on the line.

Ask her about that same boy at home, and the scouting report changes quickly.

“Honestly, he’s a big teddy bear.”

Meet Robert Sanchez. Big Rob to the football crowd. Don Beto to people who have known him since middle school. A La Villa junior who finishes blocks with an attitude, answers questions with “yes, sir,” and gets to share Friday nights with two brothers and friends he has known since before any of them could fit into a varsity jersey.

Now those kids are part of a La Villa team ranked No. 10 in Class 2A Division II in Dave Campbell’s Texas Football’s Week 11 rankings.

For Robert, there is something special about getting this far with the people who were there at the beginning.

Ruby can still picture those beginnings. Look through the childhood photos, she said, and there is usually a football somewhere in the frame. Sports were always part of the boys’ lives, and Robert was almost always the big kid.

“He was only skinny when he was born,” she joked.

Even then, he was the bigger twin.

These days, Robert and his twin brother, Andrew, line up for the Cardinals alongside their younger brother, Mark, a freshman. Andrew wears No. 55. Mark wears No. 63. Robert wears No. 77.

Ruby gets all three in the same uniform.

“I look like a little tiny person next to them,” she said.

The connection goes beyond the three brothers. So much of this team has grown up together that the roster carries years of shared memories.

“This is actually the team that is playing right now together,” Ruby said of their youth football group.

She credits the coaches who taught them early, especially Noe Castillo, whose support has continued as the boys have grown. The lessons, practices and relationships from those youth teams are still showing up on Friday nights.

Robert remembers teammates from pre-K and kindergarten. Now he gets to look across the field and see those same friends chasing a playoff run with him.

“It makes me excited and proud,” he said.

There were possibilities elsewhere. Ruby said other schools had shown interest in the boys. The family stayed in La Villa, where Robert could keep playing alongside his brothers and the teammates he grew up with.

The people cheering for Big Rob have watched him grow into that nickname. They know his brothers. They know his mother. And Ruby says they know what kind of boys she has raised.

“They’ve always been good kids,” she said.

In her house, being good at football comes with expectations everywhere else. Ruby describes herself as a strict parent, and she proudly shared that all her children rank in the top 10 of their respective classes.

Robert’s advice to younger kids sounds like those lessons have landed: work hard, keep your grades up, surround yourself with the right people and represent your school with pride.

Then Friday arrives, the helmet goes on, and the teddy bear has a job to do.

“As soon as that helmet comes on, like, it’s like, beast mode,” Ruby said.

Watch Robert finish a block and you understand why she enjoys those lineman-mom videos. He wants to get underneath a defender and keep his feet moving until there is room for somebody wearing the same jersey to run.

“I just try to get low and just drive everyone as far as I can,” Robert said.

La Villa head coach Joseph Garcia sees the preparation behind that physical play. He said Robert knows the assignments across the line and helps make sure everyone is on point with run blocking and pass protection.

And when Robert gets his hands on a defender, Garcia said, getting free is a problem.

“He’ll make people pay,” Garcia told DITV. “It’s a great asset to have in our line.”

He takes particular pride in the running lanes he and Andrew help open. The ball carrier gets the yards and the celebration. Robert gets the satisfaction of knowing how the play got started.

Coach Garcia called the offensive line the “forgotten five” in his conversation with DITV. Robert describes a group built on communication and trust.

“Just knowing what we have to do and just having each other’s back throughout the game, throughout the season,” he said.

That includes helping a teammate regroup after a mistake. Robert wants the guys around him confident and ready for the next snap.

His competitive calendar keeps going when football ends. Ruby proudly recalled a third-place state finish in powerlifting and his advancement in track. Robert said his best shot-put throw is 45 feet. (DITV threw further as a senior but Rob still has time 😂)

Ask his mother which accomplishment means the most, and she has trouble choosing.

“Everything makes me proud,” she said.

Robert understands who has been behind him through all of it. Asked what his mom has done for him, he went back through the years, from pre-K to middle school to high school. She has been there, keeping him on the right path.

“Just making sure I’m the best person I can be,” he said.

He dreams of college football and, someday, playing professionally. Right now, he wants to help La Villa go deep into the playoffs and chase a state championship for his community and the Valley.

He also has a future in mind that would keep him close to the game in another way.

“I want to go to school and become a coach.”

Maybe one day he will be the person teaching a group of little kids how to block, how to encourage each other and how to take pride in the school on their jerseys. He has had people doing that for him his whole life.

For now, he gets to be Big Rob from La Villa: his brothers beside him, his childhood friends in the huddle and his mother proudly claiming every finished block.

The town helped raise him. Ruby gave him his foundation. And the kid she calls a teddy bear is giving them all something to cheer for.

Small town. Big Rob. A whole lot of heart. Valley Made.