Orange Lutheran’s girls flag football team lost its head coach and quarterback in the span of a couple of months.
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Kristin Sherman, who had been the Lancers’ head coach since the team’s first season, resigned in March to take a position coaching flag football Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Her husband, Rod Sherman, had been fired as Orange Lutheran’s football coach in December, and he was hired as the flag football head coach at Cal Poly SLO.
Quarterback Makena Cook left Orange Lutheran in May to transfer to Sierra Canyon. All-Orange County receiver Angelina Dubois also transferred from Orange Lutheran to Sierra Canyon.
Last season, Cook threw for 7,083 yards and 112 touchdowns over 25 games and was named the MaxPreps.com state player of the year. In 2024, Cook was the Orange County player of the year in flag football and Kristin Sherman was the coach of the year in flag football.
The Lancers are getting along just fine. They are 11-1 and ranked third in Orange County going into this weekend’s MaxPreps Flag Football Showdown in Chula Vista. Orange Lutheran is No. 2 in the MaxPreps state rankings, behind No. 1 JSerra.
Orange Lutheran hired Dennis Hester, 37, to coach its flag football program. Hester has been an assistant tackle football coach at several Southern California high schools and was the quarterbacks coach at Pomona-Pitzer College. He coached middle school flag football in Claremont for two seasons.
Even with the outgoing transfers, Hester inherited a good roster at Orange Lutheran, which was 24-3 last season. The Lancers lost to JSerra, 25-23, in the CIF Southern Section Division 1 championship game.
Among the returnees is for Orange Lutheran is All-County first-team senior receiver Josie Anderson who has 55 receptions. Another returnee, junior receiver Ava Harrison, leads the Lancers in receptions with 76 for 811 yards and 13 touchdowns. She also leads in sacks with nine. Capri Cuneo has 21 receptions and also has 13 interceptions while playing cornerback on defense.
“The situation I came into was amazing,” Hester said. “At the first practice I saw all the talent we have and this team has a lot of depth. Everybody’s now seen it.”
Hester said he had to talk quarterbacks Alyssa McClure, a senior, and junior Rylee Silva into continuing to play at Orange Lutheran. Both have been solid contributors, with McClure leading the way with 1,823 yards and 27 touchdowns.
Orange Lutheran plays Bonita Vista of Chula Vista on Friday afternoon in the first round of the tournament at the Chula Vista Elite Athlete Training Center.
The bracket for the Flag Football Showdown has the Lancers potentially meeting Sierra Canyon in the second round.
For Sierra Canyon this season, Cook had thrown for 1,893 yards and 40 touchdowns going into Thursday.
Sierra Canyon, an athletically-ambitious private school in Chatsworth, also has sophomore transfer Ava Irwin, who was the 2025 Orange County player of the year after helping JSerra capture that CIF-SS Division 1 title.
Irwin was not immediately eligible at Sierra Canyon this season. She had to sit out the first half of the season. The sit-out period for flag football expired Thursday, so Irwin will be eligible for the Flag Football Showdown.
Flag football is a fast-growing sport in CIF State athletics. Flag football had 24,979 participants last fall, for an increase of 25 percent over the previous season.
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“From the start, I knew it would be big,” Hester said. “I knew from coaching ‘powder-puff’ girls football games at the high schools I was at, that there would be lot of interest in it and a lot of talent out there. When I saw that flag had become a CIF-sanctioned sport, I knew this sport would blow up big time.”
JSerra flag football coach Brian Ong also is impressed by the sport’s growth.
“This thing has far exceeded my expectations in a short period of time,” said Ong.
This is the first year of the MaxPreps Flag Football Showdown. It has attracted teams from all over the state, including Orange County No. 1 JSerra, county No. 3 Orange Lutheran and No. 6 Huntington Beach. There are also teams from Alabama and Montana.
Alabama’s Central, of Phenix City, is No. 2 in the MaxPreps national rankings, which have JSerra at No. 1, Newport Harbor at No. 3 and Orange Lutheran at No. 4.
“We’re looking forward to it,” Hester said of the tournament. “I’ve been telling the girls we’ve been prepping for this thing. It’s another opportunity to show that Orange Lutheran is still around and to show that our program is just fine.”
NOTES
• Ong said that team culture is how JSerra flag football has remained on top despite the loss of a key player like Irwin. “When you lose one piece,” Ong said, “that doesn’t mean the whole cookie crumbles when you have a solid foundation.” …
• The growth of flag football is partly due to former Mater Dei, USC and NFL quarterback Matt Leinart, whose Matt Leinart Flag Football Network program, for players from kindergarten to eighth grade, set the foundation for the success of high school flag football. …
• Some high school football public-address announcers act like game night is a tryout for an NFL radio play-by-play job. Simplify it, fellas. And remain silent during a play. …
• The Spectrum high school football game Friday is Edison vs. Palos Verdes at Huntington Beach High. …
• The Woodbridge Classic on Sept. 18-19 at Great Park in Irvine is the first big cross country meet of the season. Among the boys teams entered is Woodbridge, led by 2025 Orange County cross country athlete of the year Aidan Antonio. Also entered are Beckman, San Clemente and Trabuco Hills. The girls team entries include JSerra, El Toro, Santa Margarita and Yorba Linda. …
• Don’t worry too much about our recent heat making a mess of the Woodbridge Classic. Cooler weather is coming, and racing starts at either early in the morning or in the later afternoon hours with a mid-afternoon break. The boys and girls sweepstakes races on Sept. 12 begin well after 9 p.m. …
• As expected, August was a busy month at the CIF-SS office for processing transfers. But it was not as busy as August 2025 when the section office processed 2,075 transfers compared with the 1,971 transfers it processed in August of this year. …
• Santa Margarita’s girls volleyball team, which is No. 2 in the Orange County Top 10, plays last year’s CIF-SS Division 1 champion Sierra Canyon on Thursday, Sept. 17, at Santa Margarita. …
• Next week’s football schedule includes Yorba Linda at Huntington Beach and Bishop Gorman vs. Mater Dei at Santa Ana Stadium on Sept. 18.
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