The head coach of CIF Division I state champion Carondelet of Concord has been named the 2025 Cal-Hi Sports State Coach of the Year for girls basketball. However, Kelly Sopak’s ascension to joining a group of coaches honored by Cal-Hi Sports dating back to 1972 for the top honor for girls high school coaches in […]
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State Coach of Year: Andre Chevalier
For leading his program to its first CIF state championship post-COVID with a unit that wasn’t expected to be there in the preseason, Andre Chevalier of Chatsworth Sierra Canyon has been named the 2025 State Coach of the Year in boys basketball. His third CIF state title didn’t come at the open level, but the […]
Raul Lara: State Football Coach of Year
First-year head coaches hardly ever get consideration for this honor, but Mater Dei’s Raul Lara isn’t just any first-year head coach. He joined the Monarchs after many years coaching at other schools, including a run of 13 seasons at Long Beach Poly in which he was almost State Coach of the Year before. Lara received […]
State Coach of Year: Jason Ramirez
California of Whittier didn’t win a CIF Southern Section title and didn’t win a CIF SoCal regional title, but if you find out what Condors’ head coach Jason Ramirez has gone through over the past two seasons with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) there’s no doubt this major coaching honor is very much deserved. He’s also […]
State Coach of the Year: Anna Almeida
The highest girls hoops coaching honor in California, the one that now goes back 53 years, lands in the small town of Caruthers. It can be difficult to build a hugely successful program in a place like that, but it came together for 20-year head coach Anna Almeida with a CIF state title. She won […]
State Coach of the Year: Matt Dunn
For winning at a high level in a terrific league and becoming just the fourth coach in CIF history to win state titles at two different schools, Matt Dunn from St. John Bosco of Bellflower has been named the 2024 State Coach of the Year. From a historical view, however, just winning an outright league […]
Floyd Burnsed: State FB Coach of Year
Acalanes of Lafayette head coach became the oldest known winner of a CIF state football title and has won more than 200 games during the high school portion of a career that spans six decades. We first got to know him from a 19-year stint at Miramonte of Orinda, where he won 10 league titles […]
State Coach of Year: Jim Bennet
Winning the CIF SoCal D1 championship just two weeks after winning his 400th career game is all that’s needed for Poway’s Jim Bennet to earn State Coach of the Year honors for the 2023 season. Despite many successful seasons from 2003 to 2019, Bennet had to guide the program to major success after the COVID […]
State Coach of the Year: Mike Hansen
It all came together for the team this season at Dougherty Valley of San Ramon. For winning its first-ever CIF North Coast Section Open Division title and for rising up to compete at the highest levels of the state, head coach Mike Hansen has been named 2023 State Coach of the Year. This also is […]
State Coach of the Year: Stan Delus
The highest coaching honor in California, the one that now goes back 52 years, heads to the Inland Empire this time as Etiwanda’s Stan Delus is named for the 2022-23 season. It’s not a surprise since he hadn’t been named before and his team this year broke through to win the school’s first-ever CIF Open […]
