Must take time to focus on family

Rancho Cordova, CA (MPG) - Darren Nill has always considered the Cordova High School football program as a second family.

Now he will be shifting his focus to his own family.

Nill, the Cordova football head coach who led the Lancers to back-to-back Sierra Valley Conference titles and Sac-Joaquin Section Division III playoff berths the last two seasons, has resigned from his coaching spot. Nill said he notified the school’s administration before the start of Sierra Valley Conference play in October.

“I wanted to give them as much time as possible,” said Nill of giving the school’s administration time to find a new head coach.

Nill’s parents are in their 80s, and live in Glendale, Ariz.

“I’m lucky enough to have both of my parents alive,” Nill said. “It’s just time for me to be closer to them. There was some time in the last year and a half that I got those calls, and you just couldn’t get a flight quick enough. Luckily, everybody is doing a lot better. My wife and I thought it was just time to be closer to our family.”

Nill and his wife, Pamela, is in the process of selling their house here in Rancho Cordova. They plan to move to Arizona late winter, early spring 2018. One of their two adult children, son Jake, already lives in Arizona. The couple’s daughter, Katey, still lives at home.

Nill said he was hoping to keep it quiet about his resignation until the Lancers held their football banquet on Nov. 29^th. One of the players on the squad asked Nill about the resignation before the start of the banquet, and the coach acknowledged.

“I think it leaked out a little bit,” Nill said. “At the beginning of the banquet I addressed it.”

Nill had been the head coach for the last three seasons, and has been in the program for the last six seasons that included being the defensive coordinator under previous head coach Vance Mueller.

During the last three seasons, Cordova produced a combined 14-8 record that included back-to-back SVC titles and playoff berths, something the Lancers have not tasted since the 2006 season. Nill’s overall record in three seasons is 19-13.

Nill has considered the Lancer football program as a second family that he is going to truly miss after building success in recent years.

“I once said to (Cordova High School Principal Dan Anklum) ‘I love the kids, and sometimes I just want to strangle them,’ and he goes ‘you get it,’” Nill said. “First and foremost, you got to love them.”

Part of the process included Measure H, a half-cent sales tax that goes into community projects that passed in 2015. Cordova football purchased new equipment and brought weight trainers from Mini’s House of Pain of El Dorado Hills to train players.

“We got people back in the stands,” Nill said. “I’m happy to say that strategy worked. We had to make it fun to play football at Cordova again.”

Cordova High School Athletic Director Tom Pena said that the school “was fortunate to have Coach Nill continue the work” that was started by Mueller, a former fullback in the NFL in the 1990s who played for the, then, the Los Angeles Raiders before they moved back to Oakland in 1995.

Pena said that the high school has asked the district to post the position, and hope that it will run through Monday, Dec. 18^th. 

Pena has also noted that the school has received e-mail inquiries and interest expressed by word of mouth from coaches with a football background.

“We hope to have the candidate selected in early January in time to have the candidate hired by Feb. 1^st,” Pena said.