Football: Simi Valley has coach of the year candidate

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

Ryan Taggart was perfectly comfortable serving as an assistant football coach at Simi Valley in charge of receivers and special teams. Then, right before the season began in late August, he was asked to take over as head coach when Lance Martin lost his teaching job and was transferred to a middle school.

The worst was expected of the Pioneers. Instead, the 34-year-old Taggart was able to rally the team, and Simi Valley is 6-3 overall and very much in contention to earn its first playoff berth since 1992.

The Pioneers need a win over Moorpark on Thursday. Otherwise, there probably will be a three-way tie for fourth place in the Marmonte League with Moorpark, Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks, requiring a coin flip to decide the automatic fourth- and fifth-place playoff participants.

Last week, Simi Valley upset Thousand Oaks, getting interception returns for touchdowns from Reece Schmidt and Stratton Wolf. Quarterback Jake Maranto has passed for 1,845 yards. And Taggart is getting used to being a head coach. His previous experience was at the sophomore level.

‘I don’t know if it was something I was looking to do immediately,’ he said.

Hey, the Pioneers might have found their head coach for years to come by accident.

-- Eric Sondheimer