The562’s coverage of football in 2024-25 is sponsored by The Terry Donahue Memorial California Showcase.
The562’s coverage of Long Beach Poly is sponsored by Bryson Financial.
Long Beach Poly’s playoff opener against Northview was a bad news/good news kind of evening, as the Jackrabbits hosted the first-round CIF Southern Section Division 4 game. The bad news? A young Jackrabbit team made a lot of mistakes and is still figuring out how to win, and to finish games. The good news? They’ve got another week to figure it out.
Poly was good enough to overcome its issues and hand undefeated Northview their first loss in a playoff-opening win, 28-19.
The Jackrabbits will now hit the road, traveling next Friday to Pacifica in Oxnard for a quarterfinal game.
“We can be a lot better,” said Poly coach Stephen Barbee. “I’m really excited again to be able to watch film on Saturday and prepare for another week with these guys.”
Barbee said his team dug deep to defeat the Vikings, who had not lost a game and had also never trailed at any point this season.
“They came in with a lot of confidence from the jump,” said Barbee. “Teams are going to give us their best shot. It’s important for us to understand that and be able to respond. We played a sloppy came–we had some silly penalties, some called back touchdowns, we made too many mistakes.”
Northview came out with an inside reverse play for a 63 yard gain that caught Poly off guard, and quickly ended up leading 7-0 after their first possession. Poly’s first drive featured two two-handed drops by receivers, and they punted from midfield, with the punt shanked for only a six yard movement. Fortunately JuJu Johnson forced a fumble and Jonathan Weston recovered it to give Poly the ball back.
This time they were able to punch it in, as speedy running back Ben Harris glided across the goal line. However, in a theme for the “two steps forward, one step back” evening, they missed the extra point and still trailed 7-6.
From that point the Poly defense was dominant for two quarters however, putting up several three and outs as they did following their first score. The Jackrabbit offense got the ball back after a bad snap on a Northview punt and quickly scored on a short run by Jaden Hernandez, going up 12-7 after another missed XP.
Northview’s next drive stalled as well, and Poly got the ball back at midfield. On that drive, which would have put them up by two scores, they had two touchdowns called back on penalties, and QB Deuce Jefferson missed two wide open receivers for touchdowns. Poly ended up settling for a field goal that put them up 15-7 at halftime.
Poly opened the second half with a 60-yard touchdown by Harris. The sophomore was the fastest freshman in California last year and got a chance to showcase his speed on the straight sprint into the end zone.
“I’m very confident in my speed, but I’m not overconfident,” said Harris. “I don’t take anything for granted. I’m treating you like you’re the number one linebacker in the nation, number one D-Lineman in the nation. I’m treating everyone like they’re better than or just as good as me and playing as hard as I can.”
Poly’s offensive line paved the way for Harris all game, as he had 132 yards and two touchdowns. Poly ran for 178 yards and three touchdowns.
“We knew this was going to be a tough game,” said Poly lineman Savion Day. “There were mistakes, but at halftime we tried to fix it up. We weren’t ready to lose.”
Harris said that there’s been a lot of emotional ups and downs for Poly this year as they entered the playoffs with a .500 record, but that the team has grown from the things they’ve gone through.
“We’re not giving up on each other, Poly is really a brotherhood,” said Harris. “People be talking on the outside, they don’t know what we’re going through. We’ve really bonded, we’ve really come together as brothers.”
Harris’ touchdown put Poly up 22-7, and the defense continued to stifle the Vikings in the third quarter, as Northview inexplicably ran the clock out on themselves trailing by two scores. Always a run-heavy team, the Vikings let the clock run quite a bit between plays while trailing, at one point giving up five minutes of clock in the third quarter to travel just 20 yards before turning it over on downs.
Jefferson had an uneven game at QB (11/22 120 yards) but had a nice connection with receiver Kamarie Smith on a 33-yard touchdown on the last play of the third quarter to put Poly up 28-7. After another defensive stop to start the fourth, Poly got the ball back with nine minutes left, one touchdown away from sealing the game. Instead, Jayden Coley in at running back fumbled it, and Northview recovered and went on to score. They got the ball back again and scored a second time in the fourth to cut the lead to 28-19.
However a missed extra point and then Poly’s Dylin Bruce recovering the onside kick ended the game with Poly up by nine.
There were plenty of things that went right, and wrong, in all three phases for the Jackrabbits. Johnson impacted all three of them with the forced fumble on defense, avoiding making a mistake on special teams by not trying to force a punt return, and coming up with a big sack as well.
Johnson acknowledged that Poly still has growing to do, but rejected the idea that it’s because of their relative youth.
“There’s no such things as a young team,” he said. “We’re young, but we play hard and we can play solid and keep getting better.”
