Everhart hired to replace Fisher at Fallbrook High

Troy Everhart has been hired to take over the head coaching position for Varsity Football at Fallbrook High School. Everhart replaces former new hire Jim Fisher, who resigned from the position earlier this month.

Fisher, who replaced Darius Pickett, the Warriors' coach in 2017 and 2018, was offered the position March 12 and began with spring practice and recruiting Fallbrook students on March 18.

But by July 4, he announced he would be resigning citing a job offer his wife had received to be the head field hockey coach at the University of Michigan.

"It is with an extremely heavy heart that I have decided to resign from my position as head football coach at Fallbrook," Fisher wrote in an email passed along to the Village News.

Athletic Director Patrick Walker said at the time of Fisher's resignation that the search to replace him would begin immediately. Considering new Fallbrook Union High School District Superintendent Ilsa Garza-Gonzalez had only been on the job for four days at that point and the high school is currently still without a principal, the task may have been daunting.

Despite the odds of finding a coach with head coaching experience this late in the season, Walker announced the hiring of Everhart just two weeks later.

"We are very excited to hire a quality coach like Troy this late in the game," Walker said.

Everhart comes to the Warriors with 14 years of head coaching experience in the state of Ohio where he guided the Winton Woods Warriors for 11 years before leaving to take over at Middleton High School for three years.

He's coached at the collegiate level at the University of Cincinnati, Indiana University and the United States Military Academy West Point.

He was an assistant at Oak Hills High School from 1997-98 and at Withrow High School in 1996.

Before that, he was an offensive lineman at St. Joseph's College.

At Fallbrook High, he will fill a full-time physical education teacher position.

On Monday, July 23, Everhart, Walker and boosters met with parents of players on the team at various levels.

He talked to the parents about player accountability, his love for the game and the parents' role in helping to turn around negative attitudes that may be surrounding the program that has seen hard times of late.

The program has seen losing records in 13 of the last 19 seasons since winning the CIF championship in 2000. The program has seen a tremendous amount of turnover in the head coaching position in those 19 years.

Parents reported negative comments coming from other students, even teachers, toward players during last season, but Everhart and Walker insisted they would work hard to turn the culture around quickly.

Everhart said he has agreed to use enough of the playbook players had been working on with Fisher as to not throw them off and fall too far behind in development.

Once he is able to have contact with Fallbrook High students, he intends on approaching athletes that aren't playing competing fall sports. He insisted that parents could help bring students back to the team by encouraging their son's friends to join up.

Practice starts Monday, July 29 with equipment collection, and Everhart plans on meeting with the players for the first time that day. From there on out, it will be all football.

Jeff Pack can be reached by email at [email protected].