You’ve seen those old TV commercials before.

A coach or athlete wins a state championship and when asked what’s next, he says, “I’m going to Disney Land.”

Nobody asked Rio Rancho High School cross country coach Hilario “Larry” Chavez where he was going after his Rams girls won last fall’s Class 5A championship, but now we’re learning he could have replied, “I’m going to Germany.”

Hilario Chavez, also known as Larry Chavez Jr., helped Alana Littleford stretch before last fall's cross country meet, won by the Rams.

Chavez didn’t know that at the time, however, nor was it a certainty when the Rams girls grabbed the red trophy after finishing third at the state 5A track and field meet in May. Both state trophies were won after the Rams won the District 1-5A championships, unseating perennial distance champ Gallup.

Indeed, Rio Rancho Public Schools athletic director Bruce Carver only learned he had another coaching vacancy to fill at RRHS early last week.

In recent months he’s had to fill coaching vacancies in football, plus girls and boys basketball.

“It’s a shock,” Carver said. “(He’s a) good, young coach and with a lot of girls coming back. … There’ll be big shoes to fill. There are big shoes to fill.”

Chavez is the son of former RRHS cross country and track and field coach Larry Chavez, who resigned his positions after 11 years at the helm, and has since accepted the Cleveland High School cross country and girls’ track and field jobs.

The younger Chavez said the Department of Defense basically made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.

“I’ll be teaching (at a high school on an army base) in Wiesbaden, Germany,” he said. “It hasn’t been in the works too long. I had a few interviews.”

He said the final decision involved his wife Amanda and his parents, Larry and Rose Chavez. Larry and Amanda have two children: son Jordan, 6, and daughter Lauren, 3.

“After the first interview, we talked about ‘what if?’” he said. “It’s a good opportunity and one of the better things we could be doing as a family in general.

“It pays real well,” he said of his new job, knowing he won’t be coaching anything right away. The Chavezes will depart Aug. 2, he said.

Leaving Rio Rancho, he said, “is extremely hard, something that I didn’t have too much time to sit on. I had to make the decision pretty quick. When it was offered to me I jumped at it,” he said. “I had a meeting with my athletes Sunday — that was the hardest part of all. They were shocked; there was crying.

“I told them whoever was coach they have an opportunity to continue what we started,” he added.

His top memory, he said, was “winning that first state championship, especially on our home course.”

His prep career began when he was an eighth-grader for Tucumcari High, where his dad was a coach; he ran on the Rattlers’ cross country and track teams.

Then the family moved west to Santa Rosa. There, he was on an SRHS cross country team that claimed five straight district championship and three district track team titles.

But he did more than run: Hilario scored more than 1,500 points for the Lions basketball team and is among the top three all-time point-scorers in high school basketball in the state. He also was a two-time All-State baseball player, played in the North-South All-Star series as a senior, and helped the Lions get to the state championship game in 1996, where they settled for a runner-up trophy.

After graduation in 1996, Hilario headed back to Las Vegas, competing at New Mexico Highlands University. He then helped his dad coach cross country and track at RRHS and was the Rams’ C team coach in basketball. When former girls cross country coach Tim Flores left, Hilario became the heir apparent and later assumed the reins when Flores gave up the track and field job, too.

“I’d like to thank Rio Rancho Public Schools, Dr. Cleveland, Bruce Carver and everyone else who’s been involved with our program,” he concluded. “I’m going to be leaving the program in better shape than when I got it.”

Chavez, who led the distance team for four seasons and was the head track and field coach for three seasons, said he hoped assistant coach Patricia Chavez (no relation) would get the position. Summer workouts start in early July, he said.

Carver said he’d be accepting resumes and “open the job up and see where we’re going.

“There are different possibilities … some within our own ranks,” he said. “We do have a (physical education teaching) job to work with.”

Carver said anyone needing more information about the vacancy may call him at 896-0667, ext. 159.