Two Weeks In, The Southern Section's Marquee New Hires Are 6-14. The Only Unbeaten One Didn't Have A Team Two Years Ago.

Wes Tanner | Coaches' Desk, RepMax Media | Aug. 31, 2026

One hundred twelve head coaching vacancies were filled across the CIF Southern, San Diego and LA City Sections this offseason, according to EightLaces.org, the job-tracking site run by administrator Chris Fore. Ten of those hires drew the bulk of the attention in the Southern Section. Two weekends have now put a number next to each of them.

Those ten programs are a combined 6-14.

That number is not a verdict. Openers get scheduled up, new staffs install late, and half of these rosters are still figuring out who plays. But the first two Fridays are the only evidence anyone actually has, and staffs across the section are already using them to redraw boards — who to schedule, who to call about a transfer, whose players are about to be available. Here is what the results say, sorted by what a staffer would take from them rather than by alphabet.

The rebuild is beating the résumés

Dean Herrington took the job everyone described as a ground-up project. St. Bernard is 2-0.

The Vikings won at Los Amigos 20-14 on Aug. 20 and shut out Westchester 32-0 at home on Aug. 28. This is a program that did not field a team for two seasons and only brought football back in 2024, after former coach Manny Douglas resigned amid a federal investigation. Herrington arrived from stints at Paraclete and St. Francis. Two games in, his team has allowed 14 points.

Meanwhile the three jobs with the most institutional weight behind them — Beverly Hills, Oaks Christian, Los Alamitos — are a combined 0-6.

Jeff Bailey's old staff is 2-0. His new one is not.

Bailey left Yorba Linda after building a 58-11 record since 2020 and took Beverly Hills, where board documentation presented on Feb. 24 set his salary at $205,656.

Beverly Hills lost 39-7 at Valencia of Placentia on Aug. 21 and 38-27 to Compton Centennial on Aug. 28. Outscored 77-34.

The detail that matters to anyone tracking staff movement: on the same night Bailey lost his second game, Yorba Linda — now run by Jeff Domen, the assistant head coach Bailey worked alongside for two years — went into Long Beach and beat Poly 30-13. The Mustangs are 2-0 without him. Whatever was working in Yorba Linda did not travel in Bailey's carry-on, and that is worth knowing if you are evaluating either program's personnel this fall.

The Fenton swap has an early scoreboard

Ray Fenton won the CIF Southern Section Division 2 title at Los Alamitos in 2025 and went 80-33 there before taking the Orange Lutheran job in March. Rory Schoonmaker replaced him, arriving from El Segundo after a 14-8 run there and a season at Santa Ana before that.

Orange Lutheran is 1-1. Los Alamitos is 0-2.

Fenton's opener against Miami Central is the game worth pulling up. O-Lu led 11-0 after the first quarter and still led 14-13 going to the fourth. Central scored eight points in that quarter — a touchdown and a two-point conversion — and won 23-22. A week later the Lancers went to San Diego and beat Cathedral Catholic 38-24. That is a staff that can play with national opposition and finish against regional opposition, which is a normal August for a first-year Trinity League coach.

Schoonmaker's Griffins lost 20-7 to Inglewood at home and 31-15 at Huntington Beach. Fifteen points per game from a roster that was section champion nine months ago.

Here is the call I will wear: Los Alamitos does not make the playoffs this season.

The Trinity League's three new coaches all followed the same script

Rick Garretson, Hardy Nickerson and Fenton each lost the opener and each won Week 2 by at least 14.

Garretson, a 1974 Servite graduate who coached at the school from 1989 to 2004 before winning back-to-back Arizona Open Division titles at Chandler, opened at home against Corona Centennial and lost 41-21 on Aug. 20. The Friars then went to Murrieta Valley and won 42-10. Twenty-one points allowed in the second week from a defense that gave up 41 in the first.

Nickerson, who won a CIF State title at Bishop O'Dowd in 2025 and is the first Black head coach in Trinity League history, lost 42-21 to Sierra Canyon on Aug. 21 and then beat Long Beach Wilson 63-0. His program's own account says the Lions seized control on the second play of the game. An 84-point swing in scoring margin across seven days says the install took.

None of the three has played a league game yet. Every one of those grades resets when they do.

Two restarts, two very different first months

Oscar McBride inherited a Bishop Montgomery program that canceled varsity football entirely for 2025 following the "Football Money Man" episode, in which the man behind that name admitted paying players and families $50,000 plus expenses. The Knights were shut out 43-0 at Segerstrom in the opener. The next week they lost 14-13 to Bell Gardens at home.

From shut out to a two-point conversion short, in seven days. For a roster that did not exist twelve months ago, that is the most encouraging 0-2 on this list.

Dennis Keyes took over an Alemany team that went 1-9 in 2025. The Warriors lost 27-26 to Calabasas in his debut and then 48-20 at Notre Dame of Sherman Oaks. Keyes, a former Birmingham Charter and UCLA standout, last ran a program at Campbell Hall before that school dropped football after 2023. One point from 1-1 in Week 1. Four scores from competitive in Week 2.

The hardest read on the board

Rudy Carlton at Oaks Christian is the one I would not grade yet, and the one I would watch most closely.

The Lions were shut out 18-0 at Chaminade and lost 44-14 to Rancho Cucamonga at home. Zero points in a coach's first game is a hard thing to explain to a parent group, and Carlton took the job that Rick and Casey Clausen were widely expected to get — while the Clausens run Westlake, across the street, at a fraction of the tuition. Carlton came from JSerra as offensive coordinator and coached at Azusa Pacific before that. He is an offensive coach whose team has scored 14 points in two games.

That is a competitive problem and a recruiting problem in the same sentence. Fourteen-year-olds in Westlake Village are choosing schools right now.

What a staff does with this

Travon Patterson at Long Beach Poly is the last one worth flagging, because his situation is the one most likely to be misread. Poly won 24-7 at Downey, then lost 30-13 to Yorba Linda. That is 1-1 for a program coming off a self-imposed postseason withdrawal after six players were ruled ineligible on transfer paperwork. Patterson is the first former Jackrabbit to run the program since 2013, and the compliance overhang matters more to his first season than either result does.

If you coach in this section, the practical read from two weekends is narrow but real. Five of these ten programs are 0-2, including the reigning Division 2 section champion, and every one of those buildings will have transfer conversations before the end of September. If you are a college staff, the Trinity League's three new coaches all found something in Week 2 that was not there in Week 1, which means the film you pulled in August is already stale.

Argue with the Los Alamitos call. I will take it in the comments.

Track the whole board: RepMax Media's West Zone report covers California, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Utah and Colorado, and currently carries 244 tracked recruits including 124 blue-chip prospects across the LA, San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle, Denver and Las Vegas metros. Pull the zone report to see which of these ten rosters are holding their 2027 and 2028 talent, and which ones are about to lose it.

Wes Tanner covers the coaches' desk for RepMax Media — staff movement, coordinator hires and board-building, written for the people doing the hiring.