Sacramento-area HS football: Coaching hires, regional stars transfer out and more
Football in April? You bet.
It’s roughly the midpoint between the end of last year’s high school football playoffs and 2026 opening kickoffs, but there’s no shortage of California prep football developments in early spring.
Here are some high school football news and notes from the Sacramento region, including new coaching hires, two Sacramento Bee All-Metro football transfers to a Southern California powerhouse and a new field for one Citrus Heights campus.
Coaching carousel
The Antelope Titans, Sheldon Huskies and Vanden Vikings have named new head football coaches.
Terry Stark, a 230-game career-winning coach, takes over at Antelope, a large-enrollment campus in the Roseville Joint Union High School District that has a history of reaching the playoffs but has dipped to seasons of 3, 3 and 4 victories in each of the past three seasons.
Stark is a wing-T guru of sorts, using that deception-based run-heavy offense at Mira Loma, Natomas and at Inderkum, where he went 159-29 with 12 league championships from 2005-2019. Stark has been undone by a sore body, having played high school and college football. He had to walk away, gingerly, before coaching a game at Foothill four years ago and last season at Marysville, needing surgery and rest to repair sore hips and knees.
Brian Lewis takes over a Sheldon program in the Elk Grove Unified School District that had gone from years of sustained success to collapse, going 0-10 last season under one-and-done coach Troy Burton.
Lewis coached across the district at Valley last season and coached at his alma mater Kennedy, where he earned Bee Coach of the Year for the spring football season of 2021, when the COVID-19 pandemic pushed all prep sports into the spring months. Lewis expertly and calmly kept his grieving Kennedy team together after beloved team captain Manny Antwi collapsed late in a season opener and later died from heart failure.
Larry Hogue, the varsity defensive coordinator for 12 seasons at Vanden, is now in charge of the Solano County powerhouse. The Vikings in recent years won three CIF Sac-Joaquin Section championships and two CIF State banners.
Hogue is a Vanden graduate, earning a football scholarship to Utah State and playing professionally in the Canadian Football League.
Folsom and Oak Ridge stars transfer to SoCal
Two Bee All-Metro football players transferred out of their Sacramento-area prep powerhouse programs to play for national power St. John Bosco in Los Angeles County in an effort to boost their profile and enhance their scholarship chances.
A 6-foot-3, 225-pound linebacker and tight end for Oak Ridge of El Dorado Hills in 2025, Ben Rivas had 85 tackles, 17 for loss, as a sophomore. Oak Ridge finished second in The Bee’s final rankings.
Elijah Tuua, a 6-6, 220-pound tight end/defensive end, started his sophomore season last fall on the Folsom junior varsity team then helped boost the Bulldogs to a CIF section Division I and CIF State championship. He had 29 tackles.
Spartans’ spiffy new turf
The San Juan Spartans at 9 a.m. April 23 will have a ribbon-cutting ceremony to showcase their sparkling new all-weather field that includes bright school-color red lettering of “San Juan” in the end zone with the red spartan logo splashed across midfield.
Other upgrades include a new track and scoreboard with the ticket booth and concession stands expected to be completed by the start of summer.
San Juan is the founding school of the San Juan Unified School District, with the campus in Citrus Heights opening in 1913.
The project is the result of the Measure P bond measure that was passed 10 years ago.
Other area schools that have opened new football/track venues in recent years as a result of bonds include Mesa Verde of the San Juan Unified; Foothill and Grant of Twin Rivers Unified; and Hiram Johnson of Sacramento City Unified.
This story was originally published April 10, 2026 at 1:03 PM.