CHATSWORTH — Litigation attorney Snapper Tams sat inside an office overlooking the colonial-style buildings that hover over the late summer skyline of historic Leesburg, Virginia.
Tams sits across the street from the Leesburg Courthouse where the Declaration of Independence was first read aloud in his adopted home state.
While Tams wasn’t alive 250 years ago, he has knowledge of taking something small — almost granular in the world’s perspective — and turning it into a name that has become synonymous with winning.
Tams helped create the first Sierra Canyon football team in 2007. The program was once an 8-man school 19 years ago and has now been built into a nationally ranked powerhouse and carries the likes of UCLA commit safety Myles Baker, Texas-bound defensive lineman Kasi Currie, and Ohio State commit Marcus Fakatou, just to name a few players.
Sierra Canyon is the first school to be profiled as part of the LA Daily News High School Sports Heritage Project. The Heritage Project will serve as a running series featuring one school per month over the next decade and will feature the history, themes, and famous alumni that have come through each program in the over 100 schools the LA Daily News serves in the San Fernando Valley, Santa Clarita Valley, Ventura County, Lancaster/Palmdale areas, La Canada Flintridge, along with Malibu and Palisades communities.
Chapter one begins with Sierra Canyon and how a school known for being an elementary and middle school on Rinaldi Street became one of the most highly regarded high school sports programs in the country.
Part one: Sierra Canyon
Location: 20801 Rinaldi Street, Chatsworth
Student population: 520 students
Famous sports alumni: Marvin Bagley (basketball, Sacramento Kings, Washington Wizards, Detroit Pistons, Memphis Grizzlies, Dallas Mavericks, Denver Nuggets,) Juju Watkins (basketball, USC All-American), Kamari Ramsey (football, Houston Texans, USC), Brandon Boston Jr. (basketball, Chicago Bulls, Los Angeles Clippers), Kennedy Burke (basketball, New York Liberty, Connecticut Sun, Washington Mystics, Indiana Fever), Kenyon Martin, Bronny James (basketball, Los Angeles Lakers), Ziaire Williams (basketball, Los Angeles Lakers), Duane Washington Jr. (basketball, Indiana Pacers), Cassius Stanley (Indiana Pacers, Detroit Pistons), Scotty Pippen Jr. (Los Angeles Lakers, Memphis Grizzlies), Amari Bailey (basketball, Charlotte Hornets), Vanessa De Jesus (Duke, Philippines).
Seeds of football planted at Mason Park
Tams was part of the first graduating class in 2009. He grew up at Sierra Canyon, which had been a private but quaint elementary and middle school on Independence Ave.
He was there since pre-K and watched as friends of his grew up and went through the highs and lows of growing up in the San Fernando Valley during the early 2000s.
Tams had been a football fan and rooted for USC during the Pete Carroll era, but he didn’t play Pop Warner. He didn’t think of the sport too much other than it was something you did if you attended either Chaminade, Notre Dame, Crespi, Oaks Christian, or CIF LA City Section powerhouses like Taft and Birmingham at the time, among others.
“I knew that I was OK at football, but I wanted to take part in something special,” Tams said.
When Tams found out Sierra Canyon would expand to become a high school, starting a football team was the first thing on his mind.
He approached Head of School Jim Skrumbis and got the go-ahead if Tams could recruit enough players.
Sierra Canyon’s first high school was located inside an old bank building in Northridge.
There weren’t a lot of students, and Tams didn’t get enough players in 2005, but Sierra Canyon created its mascot.
“We chose the name Trailblazers because we are leaders,” Tams said. “We want to quite literally blaze our own trail. We had no idea starting as a new school as a freshman that it would become what it is now. We got to shape what it became.”
In 2006, Tams found 15 people to join him and embark on the first season of Sierra Canyon football. Most had never played tackle football before, and the first year was played at a JV level. A year later, the pillar of Sierra Canyon football was hired, Jon Ellinghouse.
Ellinghouse had been an assistant coach at Calabasas before becoming head coach at Sierra Canyon. Ellinghouse is now the school athletic director and has been head football coach for 19 years.
“When I did my tour and did my interview, the main school and the main building wasn’t even here,” Ellinghouse said. “There were about 89 kids in the whole school. We obviously had a dream, and I came here; I bought into the vision and bought into the person, my boss Jim Skrumbis. I believed he was the right guy to be able to do the lofty goals he had. So I was willing to take a risk as a young coach. I was coming off having my heart being broken from getting the job I really wanted. I thought, you’re young. Go give it a try. And some days were hard.”
There wasn’t the stadium that exists now along De Soto Ave. Sierra Canyon practiced at Mason Park.
Sometimes the fields would be muddy and slick from the mixture of overnight rain and sprinklers, or it would feel like practicing on concrete. If Sierra Canyon was lucky, they’d practice at Chatsworth High School’s JV field and were sometimes mocked for their lack of size in being a new program.
“I hated it,” Tams said. “Mason Park’s grass sucked. It would have these silos of bugs choking us. A halo of gnats. At the time, I didn’t know any different. We just thought it was normal and this is how you did it. That was the experience.”
The days practicing at Mason Park were hard for Ellinghouse as well. He struggled to find assistants and was coach, equipment manager and athletic trainer. He made sure athletes were safe and had proper equipment, while also coaching the fundamentals of football to students new to the sport.
“It was hard to be 8-man football,” Ellinghouse said. “It was hard to not have enough kids for practice. It was hard to be a coach that had to be the scout team and run plays to make things work. But we slowly built it, slowly chugged away, and stepped up every year. Stepped up from 8-man to 11-man and stepped up from Division 10 to Division 4, to Division 3, and now we are obviously Division 1. Along the way, we rung each bell off the ladder, and each time we attracted better athletes with kids that wanted to be part of what we are doing.”
Sierra Canyon became an 11-man football program the season after Tams graduated in 2009. Three years later, Ellinghouse guided the Trailblazers to their first state title, beating Le Grand in the CIF Division IV final 34-13.
The little team that practiced at Mason Park became the standard of high school football in 19 years’ time.
This season Sierra Canyon football is the No. 6-ranked program nationally and is beating opponents by an average of 30 points while touting an elite defensive line along with skilled position players like Cal commit Jaxson Stokes and wide receiver Sir Homer King Webb.
Every player on its roster can be considered Division I-level talent on both sides of the football, while artists like Drake are known to make appearances just to watch games. New England Patriots legend Ron Gronkowski visited Sierra Canyon before it beat Trinity League powerhouse Orange Lutheran 28-10 on Sept. 18.
Ellinghouse drives past Mason Park during his commute sometimes and he remembers that first team. The bugs, bandaging the scraped knees and teaching football at its fundamental roots before rising into one of the nation’s elite programs.
The experience practicing and building a football program at Mason Park still resonates inside Ellinghouse.
“I’m very fortunate that one of the cool things about our program is that we have five former players that coach here,” Ellinghouse said. “And one of my former players said it the other day. We were always the smallest dog in the fight, but we were tough. We were gritty, and we didn’t shy away from anything. One of the ways we built this place was not shying away from step-up games, and games not a lot of schools would be willing to take.”
Foundations for nationally ranked volleyball program
While work was being done by Ellinghouse on the football field, it was the work of Morgan Wijay and later Stefanie Wigfall that set the direction for Sierra Canyon’s success in volleyball.
“One of the most important things that brought me to Sierra Canyon was this belief and our mission of supporting women’s athletics,” Wigfall said. “Just to have seen that mission come to life has been really amazing in terms of my career, the school’s growth, and most importantly, in terms of the women that have benefitted from the resources of the program and in the overall community of the school.”
Wijay coached at Sierra Canyon from 2009-12 before being succeeded by Wigfall.
Like Ellinghouse, Sierra Canyon was the first head coaching job for Wigfall. She has won 400 career games and coached at Sierra Canyon for 14 seasons.
“My mission when I came here, I was really young,” Wigfall said. “I hadn’t run my own program fully in the past. It was my mission to put my stamp on a program with the right characteristics and core pillars that would help us grow in the future.”
Sierra Canyon has won four CIF Southern Section titles and a Division II state title in 2017 with dozens of players who have moved on to play Division I volleyball, including 2024 and 2025 AVCA Player of the Year Olivia Babcock at Pitt.
“There’s this belief in hard work, and no matter how many accomplishments you’ve earned, there’s always a desire to be better,” Wigfall said. “Whether that’s being a better teammate, player, person, or student. It’s an environment and mentality where you can grow, learn, and start to help the people behind you.”
Chevalier continues learning and growth at Sierra Canyon
Sierra Canyon boys basketball coach Andre Chevalier found success at each stop as both an athlete and coach. Chevalier was the all-time leading scorer at Cal State Northridge by the time he graduated before taking the head coaching job at Cleveland at the age of 24 and mentoring the likes of Nick Young.
Chevalier coached Oaks Christian to sectional titles in boys and girls basketball before joining Sierra Canyon as an assistant coach under Ty Nichols in 2015 and 2016 before assuming the head coaching duties.
“I’ve learned every team is a different team and each team is their own living being,” Chevalier said. “You learn to cooperate within that entity, and you learn that each individual, each player and kid is different.”
Understanding personalities, along with his longstanding knowledge, has made Sierra Canyon one of the premier places to showcase basketball during the winter.
Names like Marvin Bagley, Brandon Boston Jr., Bronny and Bryce James, Amari Bailey, Cassius Stanley have become part of both the legacy and standard set by players hoping to make a name for themselves at Sierra Canyon.
“The standard here is AP basketball, meaning advanced placement basketball,” Chevalier said. “It’s about not only being advanced as athletes but being advanced in the classroom and having the work habits set in place while you’re here so you’re successful in other areas of life by the time you leave.”
Sierra Canyon continues to push its sports programs to new heights through women’s athletics.
Senior Makena Cook stands as one of the top flag football quarterbacks in the country while girls basketball coach Alicia Komaki has continued developing elite talent during her 15 years in Chatsworth. Players like Juju Watkins and Kennedy Burke have become stars and standouts across women’s basketball.
Komaki credits the grassroots foundation of Sierra Canyon, building from a small high school of less then 50 students to the athletics powerhouse that stands today.
“Most proud has to be the reflection of the students we’ve graduated in all sports,” Komaki said. “I am a basketball coach, but I’m also an athletic director, and I’ve been here a long time. I’ve seen the different kids come through and all those kids that are now at the collegiate level or professional level that are thriving. For me, as a girls’ basketball coach, the goal is to build better people. So seeing them become better people and seeing that in action is what I’m proud of.”