Rick and Sean Curtis usually share notes and information with each other about their teams’ upcoming opponents.
Rick Curtis is the football head coach at Crean Lutheran. His son, Sean Curtis, is the head coach at Capistrano Valley.
“We might be a little quieter than normal this week,” Sean said.
That’s because their teams play each other Friday night at Crean Lutheran.
Their teams have met in preseason scrimmages in the past. They were going to do so again this season, but then they each had their Week 2 opponent cancel on them.
Capistrano Valley was supposed to play Eastlake, a San Diego County team. Crean Lutheran was supposed to play Liberty, of the Temecula area.
Both teams needed to quickly find a Week 2 opponent, so …
“We had to throw this together quickly,” Sean said. “This wasn’t like some ‘kumbaya’ moment.”
Rick has been an Orange County head coach for much of the past 44 years, with stops at University, Irvine, Northwood, Santa Margarita and Capistrano Valley Christian before becoming the Crean Lutheran coach in 2020.
Sean was an assistant coach for his father at Northwood and at Santa Margarita, spent a couple of seasons as an assistant at JSerra and became the Capistrano Valley coach in 2019.
Friday is not the first father-vs.-son coaching matchup in Orange County football.
In 2008, Los Alamitos, coached by John Barnes, played Tesoro, coached by his son Brian Barnes, in a CIF Southern Section first-round playoff game. Tesoro won 23-7.
The two coaches understand each other’s football philosophies so well that there might not be any surprises Friday.
“Sean knows just about everything I like to do,” Rick said. “Sean would say I know more about him, but he knows more about me.”
Sean said, “We’ll try to break away from the tendencies of things we normally do.”
Both Curtises said the game, not the coaches, will be the main event and will be well-attended.
“We’re both competitive and we both want to win,” Rick said. “It’s going to be like a playoff atmosphere. But I think whatever happens, we’ll still do Thanksgiving and Christmas together.”
NOTES
• Crean Lutheran senior Bryce Coleman was a versatile football player last week in the Saints’ 42-10 win over St. Pius X-St. Matthias. Coleman caught three touchdown passes from quarterback Caden Jones, threw a touchdown pass to Jones, made an interception and had two tackles. …
• Orange Lutheran has the most-challenging schedule in Orange County football. The Lancers two weeks ago traveled to Florida and beat Miami Northwestern, 17-15. Last week they beat Rancho Cucamonga, 27-24. They play in Arizona on Friday against Basha (11-2 last season), They two more nonleague games, against Serra and Sierra Canyon, which are Nos. 13 and 3, respectively, in the HSratings.com California rankings. After a bye week, they play a Trinity League opener against Mater Dei followed by a league game against St. John Bosco. …
• Bishop Montgomery, which forfeited its football game last week against Mater Dei, forfeited all of its remaining games this week after more rule violations were uncovered by the school. A booster said he paid parents to have their football-playing sons enroll at Narbonne and St. Bernard, and said he most recently was assisting Bishop Montgomery’s football program. Bishop Montgomery had no upcoming games against Orange County teams. …
• Orange County principals meet Tuesday at Segerstrom High to review the 17 proposals for league changes for the 2026-27 and 2027-28 school years. (The Orange County Football Association separately will create leagues for those two school years.) The original process sent Laguna Beach to a conference with north county schools and expanded the Trinity League to a Trinity Conference with the addition of smaller private schools Crean Lutheran, Pacifica Christian, Sage Hill, St. Margaret’s and Rosary Academy. Those results were appealed, so the releaguing process continues. …
The CIF-SS office processed 1,739 transfer requests in August. It processed 1,704 transfer requests in August of 2024. …
Mater Dei’s girls volleyball team, ranked No. 4 in the nation by MaxPreps.com, lost to Texas’ Cornerstone Christian in the finals of the Nike Tournament of Champions Southeast in Florida this past weekend. Monarchs players Kaia Ciszewski, Westley Matavao and Lizzy Robinson were named to the all-tournament team. …
Santa Margarita’s flag football team was the Division 1 champion and Portola won Division 2 in the O.C. Labor Day Classic at University High on Monday. …
Three Orange County flag football teams are on top of the MaxPreps national rankings: 1. Orange Lutheran; 2. Santa Margarita; 3. Newport Harbor. JSerra is No. 5 and Canyon is No. 9.