HEAD COACH
Eric Soto
Originally from El Paso, Texas, Eric Soto has been coaching volleyball for 24 years. He was introduced to the game in 1999 when he was asked to coach 7th grade girls at the middle school which he was teaching at. Since that time, Eric has coached middle school and high school at the 3A, 4A, 5A and 6A classifications around the state. In 2009, his family moved to Central Texas, after he joined the coaching staff at Hutto High School. Following four years with the Hippos, he was named to his first head coaching position in the Austin area. For the following six years, Eric was the varsity coach at Taylor High School, the home of the Ducks, before coming to Cedar Ridge as an assistant coach in 2019. This will be his second year as the head coach of the Raider volleyball program.
In his career, Eric has worked volleyball camps with universities and coaches around the country including Texas Christian University individual skills and team camps, New Mexico State University individual skills and team camps, Radford University individual camp, University of Texas at El Paso individual skills satellite camp, and Charlene Johnson-Tagaloa setter and individual camps. He has also coordinated several volleyball clinics including Rapidfire Volleyball Club clinics, Ken Murphy’s (UTEP) clinics, Marcy Jenkins’s (Radford), Charlene Johnson-Tagaloa’s and Kevin Hambly’s (USA Volleyball) clinics. In addition, he was also asked to present to the Texas Girls Coaches Association at the El Paso satellite clinic in August 2008.
Eric began his club coaching experience in 2003 with Sunspots Volleyball Club in El Paso. From 2005 to 2009, he coached for Rapidfire Volleyball Club serving as a head coach from 14s, 15s, 16s, and 18s. Eric also served as the Club Director for Rapidfire in his last two years with the club. Since his move to th Austin area, he has coached for Pflugerville Volleyball Club, Texas Eclipse Volleyball, Club Jollyville, CAPTEX and Roots at 13s, 14s,15s, 16s, 17s. Eric is IMPACT certified, CPR/First Aid/AED trained and is a member of the Texas Girls Coaches Association, the Texas High School Coaches Association and the American Volleyball Coaches Association.
Eric is a World Geography teacher at Cedar Ridge High School. He earned a Bachelor’s degree in Liberal Arts in History from the University of Texas at El Paso in 1998. He is married and has three children. Outside of volleyball he enjoys cooking and listening to music. GO RAIDERS!
VARSITY ASSISTANT/JV COACH
George Pina
Coach George Pina returns to the Lady Raider Volleyball coaching staff for his 3rd year at Cedar Ridge. This year will mark his 12th year of coaching volleyball. Coach Pina has coached high school varsity volleyball since 2015, club volleyball since 2014 and 5 years as the head coach at the middle school level. As a club coach, he has coached all different ages; from 12U local teams to 18U national level teams for various clubs in the Austin area. In addition to being a club coach, he is a former Club Director & Director of Operations,
Coach Pina has taught the wonderful world of mathematics for 14 years. Prior to Cedar Ridge, he taught at Connally HS in PfISD, Walsh MS in Round Rock ISD and Burnet MS in Austin ISD. He has taught everything from 6th Grade Math to Pre-AP Algebra II. Coach Pina will join the Algebra 1/Algebraic Reasoning team this year.
Coach Pina is married to his wife Pat and they have three beautiful daughters, Vanessa (College Sophomore) and Aaris (1st Grade) and Ava (newborn). Coach Pina has a BA in Political Science with a minor in Mathematics from the University of Texas at Arlington. He is also an alumni of Pflugerville HS (class of 2001). In his free time, Coach enjoys cooking, spending time with family, going to church and working out.
Coach Pina’s philosophy for both on the court and in the classroom is:
“The path to excellence will be full of obstacles and how you deal with those obstacles determines your level of success; with dedication, hard work, grit and a willingness to learn and apply new knowledge, you can be successful in whatever you set your mind to achieve and that very often learning happens in the struggle.”
Go Raiders!
