Inside The Huskies

Cato, Former Husky Assistant Coach, Resurfaces with FCS School

He'll oversee the tight ends for the Maine Black Bears.
Dan Raley|
Cato, Former Husky Assistant Coach, Resurfaces with FCS School
Cato, Former Husky Assistant Coach, Resurfaces with FCS School

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Washington Huskies

Derham Cato, the last Jimmy Lake assistant to secure another coaching job, will join the University of Maine football staff, the school announced.

Cato will oversee tight ends for the FCS school, assuming the same role he held for the University of Washington and Lake in 2020 and 2021.

He was out of football, working in sales for a San Francisco-based technology firm, after Lake and nearly all of the staff were dismissed during the UW's 4-8 downturn two years ago.

Cato, a somewhat reserved personality, was one of multiple Husky analyst coaches who Lake generously promoted to full-time positions, something that hadn't happened for several seasons if at all. Cato spent four seasons in the analyst support role in Montlake.

 

He'll join a Maine football program coming off a 2-9 season after undergoing its own coaching change to Jordan Stevens, a former Yale assistant coach and Maine defensive tackle, at the end of 2021.

The Black Bears have been a solid program before their recent downturn, most recently advancing to the semifinals of the 2018 FCS football playoffs and getting eliminated by Eastern Washington 50-19 that year.

Cato, who played his college football in nearby New Hampshire at the Ivy League's Dartmouth, will be remembered best at the UW for a couple of ignominious moments.

The Husky tight-end coach suffered a knee injury on the sideline at Oregon State, getting hit by players crashing out of bounds during the 27-24 loss and requiring hospitalization.

Also, Cato likely was the only  UW coaching connection who knew anything about the ill-fated John Donovon when the latter became the Husky offensive coordinator in 2020 and 2021.

They worked together at Vanderbilt from 2011 to 2013, where Donovan was the OC and Cato was a graduate assistant.

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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