One of the most memorable games of this past season wasn’t played with a CIF championship plaque on the line, or even in the playoffs. The second regular-season meeting between the Poly and Millikan baseball teams was such an exciting, well-played, back-and-forth game, it needed a highlight video almost 10 minutes long to capture the […]
There was a moment after the Long Beach Poly football team’s season-opening overtime win over Serra where Jackrabbits coach Stephen Barbee was overcome with emotion, and needed a second before he could answer a question. “These kids inspire me,” he said. “They put in work every day, they didn’t take days off, even when stuff […]
Hopefully there will never need to be another sports schedule like the one we saw this past spring. Sports seasons overlapped in new and difficult ways, making it even more challenging for multi-sport athletes to pursue their various passions. There were a number of athletes who navigated those choppy waters, but two of them stood […]
This year was the hardest year we’ve ever had selecting Coaches of the Year, with six Moore League teams winning CIF Southern Section championships and a number of others pulling off dramatic turnaround. Every coach deserves a salute for bringing a team onto the playing field during such a turbulent year, but we’re choosing to […]
The young talent in the city has been much improved over the past few seasons, and this year was no exception, with two freshmen proving themselves the best in the city at their sport. Jason Parra, Millikan Cross Country The long-awaited start of the 2020-21 high school sports season was also the triumphant debut for […]
Perhaps no team in the city represented the nationwide perseverance through the COVID-19 pandemic than the Long Beach Poly girls’ basketball team, which overcame the odds to win a CIF Southern Section Division 1 and a CIF State Southern California Regional championship. The Jackrabbits finished the season at 18-2, but their story was so much […]
There are dozens of gold CIF championship banners hanging from the rafters inside the Wilson High gym, but none of them had been earned by the boys’ volleyball program–until now. The Wilson boys’ volleyball team culminated a special season with an exhilarating CIF-SS title win on its home floor, earning them the distinction of our […]
The Long Beach baseball community needed a moment to savor after having a promising 2020 season ripped away by the pandemic, and the Millikan Rams delivered in June. Millikan had a magical run through the CIF Southern Section Division 3 playoffs and capped it with a 2-0 championship victory over Arlington. Not only is it […]
Many felt like the world stopped in March of 2020, but for Marcell Lineberger it was a chance to catch up and get back to what he loves. The Lakewood wide receiver was diagnosed with Pancreatoblastoma, a rare type of pancreatic cancer, in December 2019. The inevitable delay of the 2020 high school football season […]
This is the eighth year of the revived All-City Awards, which resurrect a decades-long tradition of honoring the city’s best high school athletes. Last week, we looked at the top athletes in each sport, and this week we present other awards including Game of the Year and Coach of the Year. The centerpiece of the […]