Mark Cunningham Named Football Coach at University

Mark Cunningham, football coach at Truckee High School, has been named new football coach at University High School, Athletic Director Steve Scoggin announced Wednesday.

Cunningham, 35, replaces Rick Curtis, who resigned the position last fall following the Trojans’ 1-8-1 season. Curtis is now an assistant coach at Irvine.

“He (Cunningham) knows football very well,” Scoggin said. “He’s a good coach and is well organized. We felt he would be best for our program. He beat out a strong field of candidates for the position.”

Cunningham has been the head coach at Truckee (near Lake Tahoe) since 1984, leading the Wolverines to a 6-3 mark and a third-place finish in the Elko Division 1 League last fall.

This will be Cunningham’s second coaching position in Southern California. He started as an assistant at Garey High in Pomona before moving to his first head coaching job at Chino High in the fall of 1981. In his two years at Chino, his teams were 5-5 and 7-3.

Cunningham, who attended Campbell High School near San Jose, is a 1976 graduate of San Jose State, where he was a free safety for the Spartans. Cunningham will teach general science at University and is expected to move to Orange County sometime within the next two weeks.