Send Them Off!

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I Always Thought Bowl Games Were For College Teams.

I always thought bowl games were restricted to college teams and to the best two teams in the National Football League, North America's premier gridiron competition and the main gridiron competition of record around the world. Then I am reminded of the classic series called Eyeshield 21, which talks about the legacy of the Daimon Devil Bats and their ace, Sena Kobayakawa, who leads their senior high school to untold glory culminating in their crossroads game, the Christmas Bowl, the prep equivalent of the Koshien Bowl in the college ranks, the Japan X Bowl in the X League, and the Rice Bowl overall.

A school from near downtown Long Beach, St. Anthony High School, whose grounds are adjacent to the local parish church representing the great city of Long Beach, California, is on the verge of winning its first state championship in the history of its long program. According to Mike Guardabascio of the Press-Telegram, Long Beach Poly last won the title in 1919. This would end a 97-year wait for a state championship in football to return to the city.

It's hard to believe that St. Anthony, a team whose last CIF title came in 1948, would be on the verge of history, something along the lines of the Chicago Cubs ending a long streak of futility. These things don't happen very often and the Saints, managed by Mario Morales, come into the CIF Division 4A State Bowl as favorites to silence the Pleasant Valley High School Vikings of Chico, California, coached by Mark Cooley. It's as simple as the Four Horsemen of the Purple Apocalypse having big days: Johnny Buksa V, Byron "B.J." Busbee Jr., Talaun Patton and Nico Ragas. If the Four Horseman dominate on both sides of the ball, it's a straightforward affair.

No one would be wise to sell Pleasant Valley, the rivals of Chico High School, short. They are led by a quarterback named Kyle Lundquist, who passed for 2,016 yards and 23 yards during the regular season. Ryan Busby (different spelling) is the Vikings' main back, with 718 yards and eight majors, while Payton Williams had 604 receiving yards and eight touchdowns during the regular season. Trevor Owens (374 receiving yards, four TD) and Max Andersen (365 yards, five TD) are other seniors looking for a big day out to cap off their careers. Solomon Navarro is their leading tackler with 42 tackles and six sacks during the regular season.

PV have a 10-3 record, and were tied for first in the Eastern League of the Northern Section with a 4-1 record. Placed in Division II, they defeated Shasta 53-13 before delivering a famous 20-6 upset win over Paradise before bouncing Milpitas in Oroville 24-21.

As for St. Anthony, despite setbacks to the likes of fellow postseason participants Valley Christian and Long Beach Wilson, the Saints (ranked 695th in the nation, 61st in the state), finished the regular season 8-2 before going on an epic postseason run. St. Anthony finished 3-0 in the Santa Fe League and were placed in the CIF Southern Section Division 10 playoffs. A close call against Cerritos Gahr (24-21) was followed by blowout wins over Goleta Dos Pueblos (60-28) and Riverside Rubidoux (56-21) before a thrilling 33-32 win over Aquinas in San Bernardino that forced the Saints to take a long hard look at themselves in terms of game management and playing away from home.

However, St. Anthony recovered well enough to slam Yorba Linda 55-23 to win the Southern California 4A title and will be playing their bowl game at the same venue...wait for it...Veterans' Memorial Stadium, the home of the Long Beach City College Vikings and the 2016 Western State Bowl. So the stadium will have hosted two prep bowls and a junior college bowl game within the span on a month, and all this without Long Beach Poly or Los Alamitos being involved!

Buksa has passed for 2,815 yards and 31 touchdowns against just six interceptions while  Patton has been a massive help in establishing a sound ground game, with 1,165 yards and 18 majors. Buksa has been on fire running the option game, rushing for 1,500 yards and 20 touchdowns while Busbee has 460 rushing yards and nine TD. Another option for the future is sophomore Markell Sayles, with 794 yards and 11 scores on the ground.

As a receiver, Busbee had 1,023 receiving yards and eight majors, while Ragas has 919 receiving yards and 10 touchdowns. Aaron Strickland is a receiver for the future, with 341 yards and five touchdowns through nine games in action. Busbee is the leader in all-purpose yards for the Saints with 2,224 yards. As a special teams threat, Busbee has 367 kickoff return yards and 294 punt return yards and was explosive last weekend against the Mustangs. Junior Noah Nieto is the younger brother of senior Amitai Nieto and has 71 tackles to his credit. Junior Dominick Tucker leads in sacks with 8.0 to his name.

Based on stats and quality of opposition, this bowl is St. Anthony's to lose. If the Four Horsemen get to work early and often, this will be a done deal by three-quarter time. Pleasant Valley will need a pleasant performance from its Viking defense in the home of Long Beach's Vikings or it will be a more-than-unpleasant night out in Long Beach for the pride of the Northern Section in the battle for state bragging rights in the 4A Division of the California Interscholastic Federation. I guess high schools can have bowl games, too.

Prediction: St. Anthony 63, Pleasant Valley 21

St. Anthony Saints: A Proper Long Beach Prep Football Team

I am thoroughly disgusted in my alma mater, Lakewood. Their football team is no longer watchable. Here is something you should know about me: watching high school football is no different that watching any sports event. I have expectations for the teams I care about. I demand, as a requirement: 1. proper mastery of the game on offense and defense, 2. consistency against comparable opposition, 3. convincing victories that affirm 1. and 2. Lakewood has failed in all three categories and does not deserve to be in the playoffs. In fact, given their loss to Cabrillo, it would be a miracle if they are able to upset the Panthers of Long Beach Jordan.

Mike Wadley, who is the girls volleyball coach of the Lancers, is one of my biggest critics. However, his criticism of my criticism is unfounded and naive. 1. The quality of football in the Moore League has dropped. 2. Long Beach Poly, who have a new coach apparently, are also struggling this season and were just Sandusky'd by an actual, proper prep team in the IMG Academy Ascenders, a convoy of all-stars from Florida. 3. The Moore League is playing in the wrong division and needs to move down because it is the weakest of all the leagues in the Pac-5, the highest in the CIF Southern Section. 4. The public schools in my area are not retaining the best players. The private schools are getting the better players in my area. Because of his inability to open his eyes to the new reality that I have accepted, he has been permanently blocked on my Twitter.

One of the schools that has been benefitting from all this happens to be a small school near downtown Long Beach. It's a school called St. Anthony. It is one of the oldest high schools in the city and is exactly next to St. Anthony's Church, the primary church in Long Beach, and one of downtown's top attractions. The team name is called the Saints. Their colors are purple, white and silver.

Their football team is coached by man named Mario Morales, who used to coach at Long Beach Wilson, whose Bruins defeated the Saints earlier this year. Their stadium, however, is off-campus, but has been their ground for a long time: Clark Avenue Field, which I took some photos of on my Flickr years ago. That's all changing on Friday, when I watch my first high school football game for the first time in a few years, since I was taken away from a game between Lakewood and Cabrillo at Cabrillo High School in handcuffs before being released.

By the way, this season, Cabrillo did defeat Lakewood. I am convinced that unless the Lancers start recruiting good players and stop losing out to the private schools, this team will find itself again. Right now, I will not waste my money on an alma mater that presents an inferior product and an atrocious return on investment. It's gonna take a million-dollar handout, lump sum, no fake cash, to convince me to watch these idiots show their inferior mastery of the game, maybe two. And I mean it.

But back to the match at hand. St. Anthony plays in a four-team league called the Santa Fe League. Three other teams from three others schools play in this league: the Valiants of St. Genevieve High School of Panorama City, Los Angeles; the Stars of Mary Star of the Sea High School in San Pedro; and the opponent that St. Anthony is facing on Friday: the Mariners of St. Monica Catholic High School, based out of...you guessed it, Santa Monica, California. The Avalon Schools Lancers field an 8-man side that plays in the Express League, another four-team league. They, however, went unbeaten in the regular season, going 8-0 and are doing the postseason business against the Lightning of the Sage Hill School of Newport Coast.

Currently, the Mariners are clearly out of the postseason. They come into Clark Avenue Field with a 3-6 record, 0-2 in league play, winless. A St. Monica victory won't change St. Anthony's playoff situation as they have won the tiebreaker with St. Genevieve and Mary Star. On the other hand, the Saints, well, they want to fine tune their game for the playoffs, they want to win Santa Fe outright, and they want to send their seniors out with a bang.

Watching St. Anthony football is nothing new to me. I have experienced the team win games, lose games, I have been to a few of these matches in the past. In fact, I even helped do chain gang work during a match between the Saints and the Crusaders of Downey Valley Christian, a team that, historically, has had form against St. Anthony and who inflicted the team their second loss of the season. I remember watching St. Anthony face this somewhat obscure team named Verbum Dei of Los Angeles, another team that is also not getting it done at 4-5 (2-1 league). I watched the kids warmup with an "oooh" and "aaah" chant. That, to me, is my only relevant impression of Verbum Dei football. All hype, but lacking in talent.

Verbum Dei compete in the South Catholic. The Knights of Bishop Montgomery, a school from Torrance (known more for its four public teams in Torrance, North, South and West), currently lead the South Catholic at 6-3 (3-0 league). One of their opponents happened to be...St. Anthony. They were smashed, 43-6. Of course, they also lost to the Valiants, 23-6 two weeks prior, but that's a different story.

In any case, I am more than motivated to watch high school football and I think I have found a winner in St. Anthony, a team with the talent that Lakewood is supposed to have but does not. I don't deal with jobbers to the stars like Poly, either. As mentioned before, St. Anthony tick 1, 2, and 3. The expectation is that St. Monica (who have been hilariously designated as their rival school [although, to be fair, St. Monica have had form against St. Anthony in the past]) will get smoked, and get smoked badly.

There was, believe or not, a time where St. Anthony football was just not that good. A lot of soul searching had to be done to sway the youngsters coming out of Pop Warner to give the Saints a shot. They have had a massive shot in the arm ever since. Since 2010, they have had enough players to field a JV side. Morales took over the program in 2012, and since 2013, they have been a regular in the playoffs. Their best season came in 2014, when they finished 11-2 on the year.

Last season, the Saints finished 6-5 but still made the playoffs on a 3-1 league record. That one league loss? St. Monica, 17-16, at Santa Monica College, the home of the Corsairs, whose team this year has regressed from last season. In this aspect, there is reason to believe that there will be payback. I would be tempted to lay it on these Mariners if St. Anthony demolishes these guys by halftime but my job is to simply film what's going on and also take HD photos of the old stadium with its rustic, rusty old bleachers that may or may not have gotten a facelift thanks to donations since I was last at this venue. So I would be wasting my breath giving St. Monica the riot act. Too busy filming, too angry at Lakewood Football for making me come to Clark Field instead.

If St. Monica pull off a shock result on Friday, it might discourage me from coming back to watch the Saints for a while. I don't earn six figures, but even if I did, an upset like this is a long-haul dealbreaker. It's all up the Saints to prove to me that in terms of watchablity, they are a more-than-competent alternative to the worse-than-Trump's mess that is my alma mater's football program.

One more thing: Mike Christensen, my former P.E. teacher at Lakewood, is back as head coach of the team. When the coach during my time at the school is now the coach this year after going through so many coaching changes and a lack of stability, this tells me one thing: stay away from John T. Ford Stadium until the flogs there clean up their bloody act. The principal at this school, Mario Jimenez, must think I'm a shill-faced jackass or something. Well you know what they say: it takes one to know one. It is, undoubtedly, a complete disgrace how Lakewood High School Lancer Football has now been reduced to an unwatchable, losing shell of themselves and it's for this reason I have officially adopted the Saints of St. Anthony as my main prep team in the area until further notice.

Somebody give me a flaming effigy. Go give 'em a good martyring, boys. Up the Saints.

Hard to Handle?

It’s a tradition for me to go to one Lakewood High School home football game, and one St. Anthony High School home football game every fall. It’s a sort of ritual for me, as Lakewood is my alma mater, and St. Anthony is my Catholic prep school of choice to follow. I already did the former, and last night, I decided to do the latter.

I had to make some sacrifices though. Cashing all the pennies I had, combined with trading in my NCAA Football 2008 game for the PS2. In the end, I was having too many problems with the game, and I decided then and there that it was time for someone else to go through the same hell I went through. So I had enough for a meal at Carl’s Jr, and some money for the game and a program.

The Saints were facing the Grizzlies of Downey Calvary Chapel, and up to now, Calvary Chapel were not winning impressively, with close wins. Meanwhile, Austin Muhleka was performing very well as the signal-caller, with a 3-1 record at that time. However, I knew that it was a new game, and the last thing I wanted to watch was a massacre a la the match against the Dolphins of Chadwick. Also, the match was the last game before opening Santa Fe League play against Salesian, so it was a time to impress.

The sun began to set as the Saints went through their stretches. St. Anthony’s football field, Clark Field it was called, looked as if it didn’t miss a single beat. After so many years of use, it looked like the same St. Anthony field when I first watch my very first game at this place: rusted metal, the paint chipping off the wooden bleachers, the scoreboard still looking the same, the years indicating St. Anthony’s 12 league championships, the grass pitch, and the dirt track that surrounded the field. To the north was the Touchdown Club Snack Shack, the only concession stand in the stadium, and Guesno Field, the home to the Saints baseball team. And to the far north lay the Lakewood Center Mall. Far to the south was Long Beach City College, and to the southeast was Lakewood High School. The Lancers were in my neck of the woods, and they were facing the Cabrillo Jaguars that night.

The stadium looked like it was out of a time warp, with the wide goal posts to accommodate kickers of all skills and sizes, but that was the charm of Clark Avenue Field. It was an old lady among the football field of Long Beach, but one that never got old. The sun began to set, giving way to the cool October night as the home team, decked in their purple tops and white bottoms, went through their preliminaries.

A guy by the name of Chris came over to ask some people in the stands to help move the chains. After a small pause, I decided to go ahead and help them for the course of the game. I was decked in my purple yarn scarf, with a purple St. Anthony polo shirt, my Long Beach State rugby sweater and trademark black Beach Pride hat. Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train” was blaring through the speakers. This was one of those small-school cozy-feely types of games. It was a good time to see if the Saints were in form to begin league play on the right foot. Last week, they escaped Brethren Christian, 29-26.

Also, I was still recovering from my cold, and my throat was still scratchy. I still owe it to my friend Chris. He prevented me from losing my voice a night ahead of the Beach’s volleyball match with Northridge. The lights went on. Time stood still. I closed my eyes, chain marker in hand. I recalled the days I was on the sidelines, covering junior college football games the past two seasons. I had seen it before. It was nothing new to me. But moving the chains was.

Sometimes, I would not know where to go, but as I went up and down, stretching the chains, I heard the coaches and players confer with each other. I could hear the yelling, the frustration, the elation, and the roller coaster of emotions that came from being on the sidelines. One time, I even showed my disgust at a trick play by Muhleka that went awry in a hurry.

At halftime, a young kid was wearing a Long Beach Pop Warner football jersey. “Love the LB on that sleeve,” I said.

“You do?” he said, beaming.

“Yeah.”

“Hey, it’s you, Super Fan!”

“That’s me.” I said, with my wink and salute. “Are you enjoying the game?”

“Yeah!”

“All right. Enjoy the rest of the game.” And he scurried off to sit down with his parents.

I joked with Chris midway through the fourth quarter on a key Saints drive, “By now, Lakewood should have already crushed Cabrillo right now.” I talked with him and my partner Reno about my team during my senior year, that 1-8 year from hell. Sure enough, as I went on the bus back to the Westside, I walked by Hill and Santa Fe. All quiet. I thought to myself, “The Lancers must have crushed the Jaguars, as I thought.”

I was right. Lakewood won, 48-14. But the Saints made it look like I was watching Lakewood vs. Tesoro all over again. St. Anthony was stuffed in the second half, losing to Calvary Chapel, 20-14. In retrospect, I can’t deny that it wasn’t six dollars wasted. But the prospects of Brian Walsh’s Saints to break out of their 11+ year hoodoo aren’t looking too bright right now.