{"id":810448,"date":"2026-03-13T20:18:18","date_gmt":"2026-03-13T20:18:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/810448\/"},"modified":"2026-03-13T20:18:18","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T20:18:18","slug":"sunny-hills-hires-luis-cruz-as-football-coach-orange-county-register","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/810448\/","title":{"rendered":"Sunny Hills hires Luis Cruz as football coach \u2013 Orange County Register"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Support our high school sports coverage by becoming a digital subscriber.\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/checkout.ocregister.com\/subscriptionpanel\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Subscribe now<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Sunny Hills has hired Luis Cruz as its football coach, the school announced Friday.<\/p>\n<p>Cruz spent the past two seasons as the coach at Santa Ana.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe hiring of coach Cruz marks an exciting new chapter for Sunny Hills,\u201d Sunny Hills stated in its announcement. \u201cWe are proud to welcome coach Cruz as he prepares to lead the program with passion, integrity and a commitment to excellence both on and off the field.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Cruz replaces Fred Gambrell, who departed after two seasons to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ocregister.com\/2026\/02\/12\/aliso-niguel-selects-fred-gambrell-as-new-football-coach\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">become the coach at Aliso Niguel<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Santa Ana went a combined 6-14 the past two seasons under Cruz, including an 0-10 mark in the Iota League.<\/p>\n<p>Before taking the helm at Santa Ana, Cruz served as an assistant coach at Santa Ana, Fullerton College, Esperanza and Valencia, his alma mater.<\/p>\n<p>Cruz\u2019s hire is pending human resources and district board approval. He is expected to be an on-campus physical education teacher.<\/p>\n<p>Sunny Hills finished 6-4 last season after going 2-8 in 2024.<\/p>\n<p>For the next two seasons, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ocregister.com\/2025\/12\/18\/orange-countys-new-football-leagues-are-set-for-2026-and-2027-seasons\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Sunny Hills will play in the Kappa League<\/a> with Canyon, Esperanza, Fullerton, Portola and St. Margaret\u2019s.<\/p>\n<p>The Lancers\u2019 placement in the Kappa represents a one-league promotion in the Orange County Football Conference from the Lambda League.<\/p>\n<p>Please send football news to Dan Albano at dalbano@scng.com or @ocvarsityguy\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Support our high school sports coverage by becoming a digital subscriber.\u00a0Subscribe now Sunny Hills has hired Luis Cruz&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":810449,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2026],"tags":[1443,37740,7,56359,2682,3131,5764,9],"class_list":["post-810448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-california","tag-dan-albano","tag-football","tag-fullerton","tag-high-school-football","tag-high-school-sports","tag-orange-county","tag-sports"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116223719094027562","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810448","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=810448"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810448\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/810449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=810448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=810448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=810448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}