Bianka Meza is a busy person as the attendance secretary at Granite Hills High School, but she also does so much more for the students.
Meza has been coaching since she graduated high school and is in the middle of her seventh year of coaching, bringing her expertise and enthusiasm to the Grizzly marching band auxiliary.
Originally from Salt Lake City, Utah, Meza moved to Porterville when she was 15 years old and has lived here since, balancing her personal and professional lives.
Outside of coaching and working as the attendance secretary, Meza enjoys making custom crafts for my peers, friends, and family. She has made graduation caps, flower bouquets, and custom shirts and sweaters. Her products can be found on her Instagram account @all.thingz.crafted.
Meza is a busy person, but she prefers it that way.
“It becomes difficult at times because coaching is not just a during-practice thing,” Meza said. “The students reach out to me all day, every day, and sometimes there’s no escape, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Granite Hills senior Jose Navarro is a big fan of the products Meza sells on her Instagram.
“I love Bianka’s products,” Navarro said. “She helped produce my Homecoming shirts for me and my friends, and she did it extremely fast. 10 out of 10 recommend.”
Meza is an avid fan of music and loves going to concerts to see her favorite artists live.
“If you watched most of the GTVs last year and saw me in them, there was always Bad Bunny playing in the background,” Meza said.
You can bet she’s looking forward to this year’s Super Bowl halftime show.
Meza chose to become a coach because when she first graduated from high school, her coach asked her to come and help. She began as a volunteer but was eventually handed the responsibility and has been doing it since. Meza continued to coach because she grew to love the activity and the atmosphere.
“Every year is different, but they definitely remind me why I continue to coach,” Meza said.
Meza said the most rewarding part of coaching for her is her kids. Throughout her years of coaching, she took great pleasure in watching her students grow as individuals and expanding the program. She enjoys pushing all the members to the highest potential because she says everyone can do everything as long as they are working for it.
Over the years, she’s had many memorable moments, such as singing with the team, the football games, the late-night competitions, and the birthday celebrations.
“Coaching is not without challenges,” Meza said.
Meza said she hopes students walk away gaining many good memories from the experience. Meza hopes they look back after they leave and miss the activity and all the things the team did as a group. She wants her students to gain basic working skills such as leadership, commitment, teamwork, and being able to balance work and a personal life.
Meza gives her students plenty of advice. Her favorite is, “Life live to the fullest while you can, laugh a little, cry a little, but continue living and make as many memories, bad and good.”
In the next few years, Meza aims to continue running a great program, and if her kids are reading this, redeeming themselves and bringing home a championship banner.
“After getting first place every comp and losing at our championships, it affected not only me as a person but our whole team’s confidence,” Granite Hills senior Dominic Palomar said. “No matter how many times we won, we continued to strive for better and better. Winning championships has always been a really big goal of ours. We’ve gotten so close year after year. Hopefully, this year we can make that dream complete because it would mean a lot for the team and for Bianka.”
Meza doesn’t know what the future holds for her, but with the dedication she shows at work and to the students, anything is possible for her.
“I personally do not like to see that far into the future because we never know what could happen,” Meza said. “I like to live in the present and build off what I have in front of me.”
As for her coaching advice: “Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard. Be the coach you needed when you were their age.”
