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High School Sports

Rae Hired by Channel Islands

By STEVE HENSON

Donnie Rae, a Ventura County native with an impressive coaching background in the college and high school ranks, was hired Monday as football coach at Channel Islands High.

Rae was head coach at Fresno Roosevelt High the last six years. In addition, he has been an assistant at USC, San Diego State, Nevada Las Vegas, San Jose State and Brigham Young.

“I think we got ourselves an outstanding choice,” said Mike Martinez, principal at Channel Islands. “[Roosevelt] is a school with similar demographics as ours and he turned that program around.”

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Rae, who attended Villanova Prep in Ojai and Ventura College, replaces Jack Willard, who resigned after three seasons. The Raiders were 2-9 last season and are 15-75-2 since 1991.

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High School Sports
Steve Henson

Steve Henson is a breaking news and enterprise reporter at the Los Angeles Times. He previously served as an editor and reporter in the Sports department. Henson was a leader in digital-only newsrooms from 2007-19 as a senior editor and columnist at Yahoo Sports and as senior editor at the USA Today Sports Media Group. This is his second stint at The Times, having covered the Dodgers and UCLA as well as doing enterprise, investigative and features writing from 1985-2007. Henson was awarded first place in sports features in 2023 and in 2021 by the L.A. Press Club. He has been honored several times by APSE — most recently in 2023 and 2021 — and also by the California News Publishers Assn., the Football Writers Assn. of America and U.S. Basketball Writers Assn.

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