Veteran Sacramento football coach returns. Another is on administrative leave
Terry Stark is back in the coaching saddle, a 230-game career winner looking to add to that total in a quest to elevate the fortunes of another football program.
Fifty years after dazzling at quarterback for Mira Loma High School in the hard-to-defend wing-T attack, and five years since he was last in charge of a program, Stark is the new head coach for the Marysville Indians, a small-school program that has tasted varying degrees of success and frustration over the decades in Yuba County.
Stark met with the Marysville team on Thursday. He will this fall be joined by longtime right-hand coaching pal Tod Hamisaki, who was with Stark during the rise of the Inderkum Tigers program of that Natomas Unified School District.
Stark from 2005 to 2019 transformed a new-school football program into one of the region’s best, going 159-29 with 12 league championships, four CIF Sac-Joaquin Section title game appearances and 24 playoff wins.
Stark learned the wing-T, big on misdirection plays in the backfield, from famed Mira Loma coaches Don Brown and Gerry Kundert. He used that offense to turn Mira Loma around when he became head coach in 1990, when the wing-T became the regional craze, and he infused that offense into the Inderkum program. He will do the same at Marysville.
Very few area teams run the wing-T these days, outside of the Placer Hillmen under Joey Montoya and a few others dotted across the section — and Stark-coached teams, of course.
Stark could not be immediately reached by The Sacramento Bee for comment. But he did say in a 2020 Bee interview that coaching is difficult for him to avoid: “For me, I don’t know if it was an addiction, coaching, but it was addicting. It’s hard to step away from. It’s a race from each part of the season to the next. You go from the off-season to spring, to summer, to preseason games, to the regular season, to the playoffs. You try to get in as many practice reps as you can. It doesn’t slow down. You get your time in, and it’s a grind but it’s rewarding.
“It’s what you do. You get up in the morning and go.”
Reggie Harris on admin leave
Inderkum football coach Reggie Harris is on administrative leave and is not teaching physical education classes at the Natomas Unified School District school, two people who were not authorized to speak on personnel matters confirmed.
The investigation is not directly related to Harris’ coaching duties but more as a PE teacher. The school asked Inderkum athletic director and assistant football coach Justin Reber to oversee spring football drills.
The spirited Harris was a longtime defensive coordinator with the Grant Pacers, including for the 2008 CIF State Open Division championship season.
Harris could not be reached for comment.
Truckee and North Tahoe to the CIF?
North Tahoe and Truckee will continue to compete in high school sports in Nevada and hold off a move to join the California Interscholastic Federation for at least a year.
Community members on Wednesday night met at the Tahoe-Truckee Unified School District to discuss concerns on leaving the Nevada Interscholastic Activities Association for the CIF, most of the voices expressing a desire to not realign to California leagues. The board voted to delay the move for the schools to the CIF until the start of the 2026 academic year, the move tied to the Nevada prep governing body’s new transgender athlete ban. California laws protect gender equity.
Though both schools are located in California, Truckee and North Tahoe have competed in Nevada sports leagues for decades, largely because of logistics and weather. Snowstorms have over the years halted travel over the Sierra Nevada on Donner Pass or reduced it to a bumper-to-bumper crawl.
Truckee is a 14-time Nevada state champion in football after leaving the CIF. Truckee competed in the Pioneer League from 1965-1975, a collection of teams that included Colfax, Colusa, Del Oro, Lincoln and Wheatland, and later included Folsom, Lincoln and Live Oak.