Family remembers how this Sacramento-area coach shaped their football lives. ‘Dad was an expert’
Marshall Nixon had a constant companion while coaching football in Southern California at Corona High School and later in Grass Valley at Nevada Union High.
His son, Chris Nixon, was a ball boy who soaked in practices, sorted out helmets during film sessions and watched his teenage idols sweat while lifting weights or gutting out wind sprints across the Hooper Stadium grass in a tree-lined stadium.
Marshall Nixon died Dec. 2 at 85, and the lessons his son learned helped him become what his father was: A highly regarded father, a teacher and coach who produced championship seasons at Elk Grove High and playoff teams at nearby Sheldon.
Chris Nixon’s two sons, Scott and Sean, have followed in their grandfather’s and father’s footsteps. They, too, were ball boys for their father, doing so at Elk Grove. The boys became star high school players at Sheldon playing for their father in earning multiple Bee All-Metro honors, including Scott as The Bee’s Player of the Year in 2022, and they have embarked on coaching while finishing college.
“It was fun for me,” Chris Nixon said of growing up with his father and having football a constant in their lives. “I had no idea at the time what kind of lessons dad was teaching me: Perseverance, grit, brotherhood, getting a team to work for a greater cause. It was all there, and dad was an expert at it.”
Chris Nixon grew from ball boy to a receiver, starting on his father’s final NU team in 1982 before playing the position at UC Davis.
‘Bull’ became quite a coach
Known as “Bull” when he played guard at the University of Redlands in the 1950s, Marshall Nixon garnered NFL interest from the Chicago Bears, “back when 5-foot-10 was fashionable for NFL guards,” his son Chris said with a laugh. The Bull became quite a coach, however.
Marshall Nixon steered the Miners football program to success guiding the program to its first playoff season in his first season in charge, in 1976. He led the program to the Sierra Foothill League championship in 1978 and fielded one-loss teams in 1978, 1980 and 1981 when the Miners’ biggest rival was Placer.
Games usually had overflow crowds in Grass Valley or in Auburn, where the Hillmen produced state-ranked championship teams.
“Dad was so laser-focused on how to beat a team like Placer that it wasn’t uncommon for him to drive off with his coffee cup still on the roof of the car,” Chris Nixon said.
Marshall Nixon was pained by his dismissal at Nevada Union, despite going 52-24, but he remained a teacher on campus and supportive of his successors, Randy Blankenship and Dave Humphers. Those coaches elevated the program into a Sac-Joaquin Section powerhouse.
Marshall Nixon did not get back into coaching. But he watched his son lead playoff teams at Elk Grove and Sheldon, as well as watching his grandsons produce big football numbers to match their perfect grades.
“He was a great man,” grandson Sean Nixon said. “Sad news but he’s in a better place now. It’s cool to know that the last game he saw me play was against Chabot last year (while playing quarterback for Sacramento City College), and I threw three touchdown passes.”
When asked several years ago by The Bee what he thought of his coaching son and rising-fast grandsons, Marshall Nixon said, “I am so impressed with how Chris coaches and runs a program. What a coach. I see my grandsons running around as ball boys and it reminds me of Chris. Don’t tell Chris, but his sons were better ball boys.”
Said Chris Nixon: “I was blessed with the greatest job in the world. I can only hope I passed some of his legacy on to my ball boys, Sean and Scott. I know their grandpa was proud of them. I’m not sure my mom would approve, but dad had no problem with them running around the practice field at Elk Grove, shirtless on freezing November nights, and he rarely missed any of their own games.
“I’ll cherish that dad got to see them play high school football. Now we are all coaching, passing on his lessons, and I know dad is looking down on us, yelling, “Run Power!”’
Rick Swan dies
Rick Swan, a star quarterback Shafter High in Kern County who played at the University of Miami and Sacramento State and who spent decades as an assistant coach in the Elk Grove Unified School District, died on Nov. 27 at 81, peacefully in his sleep, his family said.
An avid fisherman big on family and football, Swan was the head coach at Elk Grove High in 1969 at 26, “when I was young, dumb and really stupid,” he told The Bee decades later with his familiar high-pitched laugh.
Swan was a charter member of the Valley High faculty when the school opened in the district in 1977. He joined fellow charter staffers Dave Hoskins and Mel Fontes to create what was known in area coaching circles as “The Three Amigos”.
They coached Valley to immediate success, which was unheard of then for new schools. The coaches basked in a 12-1 Valley team in 1995, the best in program history, and the three were on the coaching staff at Elk Grove High in 1997 and 1998 when the Thundering Herd rolled to section championships. Also on that coaching staff was Chris Nixon.
Swan long maintained that his greatest coaching joy was coaching his sons, Steven and Shane, in middle school at St. John Vianney Parish in Rancho Cordova.
This story was originally published December 21, 2024 at 5:00 AM.