Grace, formerly known as Grace Brethren, used to be a high school football powerhouse.
The peak of the Lancers’ run under former coach Josh Henderson came in a three-year window from 2017-19 when they reached three straight CIF Southern Section finals. Grace won a Division 8 championship in 2017, won a Division 4 crown and CIF State Division 2-AA title in 2018, and in 2019, beat Oaks Christian 54-28 in Westlake Village in a classic ‘little brother beats big brother’-type game.
Section titles. A state title. Players signing scholarships to play in college. Life was good.
Then the spring of 2020 came — COVID.
As the spring of 2021 came around and other high-flying programs were figuring things out for an abbreviated spring season, Grace’s brass had other plans. In what felt like an overnight move, the football program became but a vapor. Gone. Slashed. No more.
Head pastor of Grace Church of Simi Valley, Jordan Bakker, said football was getting too large – the program needed to be “scaled down.”
Henderson confirmed to the Daily News in late March that year that the school was canceling football, and two weeks later, he resigned. His 10-year reign that saw the Lancers win 94 games, seven league banners, two section championships and that beloved CIF State crown was over.
Then came Tom Coate, a high-energy coach who was left to pick up the pieces. He didn’t just pick them up, he molded the program back to life.
Grace hired Coate in May of 2021 to start over with 8-man football in the fall, and so he did.
“Six kids showed up to the first practice,” Coate said. “Only two had ever played football before.”
The former Chadwick coach started from scratch with a crop of underclassmen and played two 8-man football seasons before having the program’s first 11-man football season in 2023 and 2024, and the Lancers had back-to-back 7-4 seasons.
In just the program’s third year back in 11-man football, Coate has led the Lancers (10-3) back to a CIF Southern Section final where they’ll take on Santa Paula (8-5) in the Division 12 title game at Cal Lutheran University at 7 p.m.
What Grace has done is remarkable, and with a roster of just 28 players.
“All our kids play both sides of the ball,” Coate said. “We sub when we can up front … but these kids are tough. I’ve seen guys dislocate fingers, pop ‘em back and go right back in.”
This team is short on players, but not on talent.
Junior QB Riley Williams has thrown for 3,092 yards and 40 touchdowns. Senior running back Jake Williams has tallied 1,801 yards and 18 touchdowns. Senior wideout Landon Cooper has 72 receptions for 1,300 yards and 18 touchdowns.
On defense, junior linebacker Grayer Giuliani-Gibbons has 116 tackles this season, while TJ Moore has 102 tackles and 11 sacks. Cooper is one of the top two-way players for the Lancers with 114 tackles, too.
“This is absolutely the highlight of my coaching career,” Coate said. “But these kids make me look good. They’re always together. They genuinely love each other.”
Grace’s high school enrollment is around 200 students (boys and girls). Santa Paula’s enrollment hovers around 1,600. It’s a classic David and Goliath game when it comes to depth and numbers, but under the CIF Southern Section’s new competitive equity model that uses computer rankings to place teams based on their current year, the Lancers are clearly right where they should be.
“God’s been good to us. He’s protected us,” Coate said. “We’re thankful for the opportunity.”