By Robert Perea
Homecoming comes almost every day for the members of the Fernley High School football coaching staff. As the Vaqueros prepare to open the 2025 season next week at Douglas, a coaching staff that includes eight Fernley High School alums brings hometown pride to the field where each of them starred in their own high school careers and now hope to lead the current group of Vaqueros to their own glories.
“Every single one of the guys that have come back are all guys that have played at the next level and have accomplished a lot of things,” said head coach Anfernee Sloan, a 2014 Fernley graduate. “Lots of guys that have done a lot for this high school that can kind of give back.”
A 2014 graduate, Sloan is embarking on his fourth year as head coach. As a player at Fernley, he finished his career as the school’s all-time leader in interceptions and among the leaders in tackles, and was part of the 2012 team that ended Truckee’s 41-game winning streak one game shy of tying the state record. He played at Eastern Oregon University before coming back to Fernley as a teacher and assistant coach, then became head coach in 2022.
Jake McCullar has served as defensive coordinator during Sloan’s’ head coaching tenure. A 1997 graduate, McCullar was part of two district championship teams and three teams that went to the state playoffs.
“When I played football here, it was small-town football, which was amazing,” he said. “The town quite literally shut down and the stands were packed. It was nothing better. And I feel like post-pandemic, we’re starting to get back to that.”
McCullar said all of the most influential people in his life have been teachers and coaches and he always wanted to come back to Fernley to teach and coach.
“I want to give back to the people who helped me be successful and I want to give that to other kids,” McCullar said.
Now, McCullar’s son Brandon, who graduated in 2023, has joined the staff this season. Brandon McCullar wrestled in college at Concordia University in Wisconsin, but after two years, he was ready to come home and start coaching.
“I bleed orange and black, so it definitely hits heavy on the heart, coming back and getting to see people exactly where I was three or four years ago,” he said.
Josh Paulman graduated a year ahead of Jake McCullar in 1996 and coached at Fernley from 2010-2013 before moving away for a job. Now he’s back in Fernley and on the football field. Paulman is the school’s all-time leader in sacks with 33 and played at Southern Utah University.
“Something I’ve wanted to do is come back and give to the program that gave so much to me,” Paulman said. “I was able to go to college because of being here at Fernley and playing football.”
Like Jake McCullar, Paulman remembers what seemed like the whole town packing the stands every Friday night when he was in high school.
“I think we’re getting back to that,” Paulman said. “I think Coach Sloan has a really good connection to the community. I mean, he’s not that far off as a graduate himself.”
The player who is second behind Paulman with the most career sacks in Fernley history is Thomas Chapin with 24 and a half. Chapin graduated in 2029 and is in his third year coaching in Fernley, after playing football at the University of Jamestown in North Dakota. His mother Diane has the most wins in state history as softball coach at Fernley with 682 and has won seven state championships.
“I have an immense amount of love and pride for not just Fernley High, just Fernley in general,” Thomas Chapin said. “I think Fernley when I was born was maybe 5,000 people, and now 24 years later, we’re pushing 30,000 people, so in a sense, I’ve almost felt like I’ve grown up with the community.”
Chapin didn’t plan on teaching or coaching at all, but after graduating from college he was having difficulty finding a job until principal Ryan Cross offered him a teaching position. He took it as a stopgap, and now can’t imagine doing anything else
“It’s all that pride and just the connection I have to this place and the things I got out of it,” he said. “I want to be able to transfer that onto the kids that are going through it.”
As accomplished as all those coaches were as players, the only member of the staff who won a state championship at Fernley is David Sisneros, something he doesn’t hesitate to point out.
Sisneros was a junior on the Vaqueros 2019 state championship team and is in his first year coaching after playing at the University of La Verne in California, where he got a degree in kinesiology. All along though, Sloan said he’s been waiting for Sisneros to finish school and come back home to coach.
“He’s always told me he wanted to come back and coach, and I’ve just had him on my radar,” Sloan said. “I’ve waited every ear and that last year came up and I reach out to him, and bang, bang.”
Sisneros said he wants to see the current players experience a state championship like he did.
“I want them to not wait as long as we did to get another one,” he said. “I’m ready to give back what I’ve learned.”
Former players Jared Caul and Gabe Tollestrup are also helping out the program.
“We’ve got guys that value this community. Not just the high school, but the community,” Sloan said. “They’re all very prideful of Fernley and they value the importance of making sure that this culture that we have established here, not just football, but athletics in general, is strong.”
Meanwhile Jake McCullar sees the program heading back to where it was after a couple of years of struggles.
“I think we’re getting back to Fernley football,” he said. “It gives me goosebumps, because that’s how it was when I played.”
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