Meet the new head coaches in 6A Arizona high school football

We take a look at the new head coaches this season in the 6A conference.

We’ve spent the past three weeks rolling out a comprehensive Arizona high school football preview, including team previews, region previews, conference previews, player profiles, player rankings, predictions and more.

You can find all of that preview content at this link.

Here, we take a look at the new head coaches this season in the 6A conference.

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Colin Thomas – Liberty

Thomas spent five seasons as the Lions’ offensive coordinator and helped lead them to last year’s 6A state championship. He took over the program after Mark Smith left to become head coach at his alma mater of Shelton (Wash.). Thomas teaches P.E. at Liberty and has coached baseball and basketball at the high school level. He coached for eight seasons as offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Dover High School in Delaware.

Sean Hegarty – Shadow Ridge

After nine seasons as an assistant at Ironwood — many spent as offensive coordinator — Hegarty has his first head coaching job. He played high school football at Paradise Valley and college ball at Glendale Community College and New Mexico Highlands University. He also was the head baseball coach at Ironwood and a special education teacher, a position he now holds at Shadow Ridge.

Eric Lauer – Mountain Pointe

Lauer coached at Mountain Pointe from 2003-17 under Karl Kiefer, Phil Abbadessa and Norris Vaughan before spending the past two seasons as the head coach at Marcos de Niza. During his nine-year stint as the assistant head coach under Vaughan, Lauer helped lead the Pride to eight semifinal appearances, three state title games and one championship. He will retain his position with the Tempe Union district as Health and Wellness Coach.

Francisco Rangel – Trevor G. Browne

Rangel is receiving his first opportunity as a head coach after a successful stint as Catcus’ offensive line coach. He played football at Raymond S. Kellis (Class of 2011) and was a linebackers/special teams coach at Paradise Valley for the 2018 season before joining Cactus last year.

Chad Talley – Copper Canyon

Talley returns to Copper Canyon, where he assisted in 2018. He was the head coach at Cloverdale (Calif.) from 2016-17 and at Paradise Honors last season.

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MORE: 2020 ARIZONA HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL PREVIEW