Hardy Nickerson as its coach<\/a>. Nickerson coached Bishop O\u2019Dowd of Oakland to a CIF State championship in 2025.<\/p>\nAre there any NFL players headed to Orange Lutheran or Servite?<\/p>\n
Probably not. Let\u2019s start by establishing that Alabama high school football coach and part-time pro football quarterback Philip Rivers isn\u2019t coming back to Southern California.<\/p>\n
Orange Lutheran candidates could be \u2026 and this is in alphabetical order, so don\u2019t get too excited \u2026<\/p>\n
Anthony Catalano. He is an assistant head coach at Corona Centennial. He has deep roots at Centennial, having played quarterback there, his brother Dominick just completed a great senior season as the Huskies\u2019 quarterback and sister Giuliana was a basketball star at Centennial. Maybe he waits until longtime head coach Matt Logan moves on and then succeeds Logan?<\/p>\n
Ray Fenton. He coached Los Alamitos this past season to the CIF-SS Division 2 championship and has had success elsewhere. Fenton had a happy season in 2025, but he loves a challenge and just might pursue a new one.<\/p>\n
Steve Fifita. He was Santa Margarita\u2019s interim coach when the school fired Anthony Rouzier as head coach during the 2024 season and stayed on as defensive coordinator in \u201825. Players love him.<\/p>\n
Matt Logan. Centennial\u2019s mega-successful head coach lives in Huntington Beach. He has a great thing going at Centennial \u2013 he probably could run for mayor, and win. One day, maybe he is a Trinity League coach, but maybe that day is not coming for a couple of years.<\/p>\n
Frank McManus. He was fired as Mater Dei\u2019s football coach after one season, the 2023 season, after many years as an assistant coach there. McManus led the Monarchs to CIF-SS and CIF State titles but he messed up in other categories and was fired. He was hired at Cardinal Newman for the 2025 season, led the team to a league championship and an 11-2 record and maybe lost the rough edges.<\/p>\n
![\"Mater](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/OCR-L-HSFB-MDEI-093022.jpg\")
Mater Dei coach Frank McManus signals to his team during the Trinity League football game against Servite in Santa Ana on Friday, September 29, 2023. (Photo by Paul Rodriguez, Contributing Photographer)<\/p>\n
Troy Thomas. He was Servite\u2019s head coach for two stints. Thomas fired up a moribund Servite football program when he first arrived there in 2005 and led the Friars to league, section and state championships.<\/p>\n
Servite might be going after \u2026<\/p>\n
Fifita, Logan and Thomas. See previous for details. And, side note, many alums, especially the younger ones, would love to see Thomas return.<\/p>\n
Rick Garretson. Garretson was a football star at Servite and later an assistant coach. He coached Chandler High in Arizona to two state championships before retiring at the end of the 2024 season. Garretson is 71.<\/p>\n
Frank Mazzotta. He won his eighth CIF-SS championship at La Habra in 2025. Mazzotta can win with any type of team \u2013 a defense-first team or a team that runs the ball or a team that throws the ball. He is kind of like Logan, though, in that he has a great thing going so the desire to leave might be zero.<\/p>\n
Rod Sherman. He might be on the short list at Servite. Sherman is known as a high-character man who gets along with everyone.<\/p>\n
And all of these possible candidates have one thing in common \u2026<\/p>\n
They all know what happened to Victor Santa Cruz, Rod Sherman and Chris Reinert.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Trinity League football is a rough neighborhood. Half of the league\u2019s coaches got wiped out within the past…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":740096,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1443,7,36633,2682,3131,49,48,9,1004],"class_list":{"0":"post-740095","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-california","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-high-school-all-sports","11":"tag-high-school-football","12":"tag-high-school-sports","13":"tag-ncaa","14":"tag-ncaa-football","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-top-stories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116040421022847487","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/740095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=740095"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/740095\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/740096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=740095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=740095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=740095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Santa](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/OCR-L-HSFB-SMARG-FINALS-1129-KB39-1.jpg\")
Santa Margarita Eagles Head coach Carson Palmer holds up the championship plaque after defeating the Centennial Huskies 42-7 to win the CIF-SS Division 1 championship game at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena on Friday, November 28, 2025. (Photo by Keith Birmingham, Pasadena Star-News\/ SCNG)<\/p>\n