It all begins innocently in Pop Warner football leagues throughout Los Angeles County and then those with the passion and dedication mushroom into gifted teenagers talented enough to star for the freshman, junior varsity and then the big team on campus.

High School football has not been without it scandals as recruitment of talented players begin often before they complete middle school, but it in the end the becomes the purest from of athletic competition in America.

Check many who have attended Dorsey, Crenshaw, Long Beach Poly, Narbonne among other schools and you will find individuals who became good enough to star in college like Desean Jackson (Long Beach Poly) at Cal or make it to the NFL like Nnamdi Asomugha (Narbonne) with the Raiders.

The prep football landscape is not without it’s outstanding coaches like Robert Garrett who took a doormat Crenshaw program and unseated the most storied basketball program in the history of the city.

That football factory in Long Beach at poly keeps churning out one stud after another, but this year will receive its stiffest challenge yet from Compton, which made the post season last year for the first time in more than two decades.

With this state championships that is too limited to reveal a real champion or it’s many division championships in both the Los Angeles City and Southern Section which allow for a View Park Prep to be born it’s openly competitive and not always fair.

But, hey, who said that life was supposed to be fair? This is a game where the survival is of the fittest and if some big time Division I school comes calling it’s all good, but there are options at El Camino and Southwest just in case.

Here’s to those young men who after a summer of hell, weeks and hauling forty to fifty pounds of equipment to and from home and discover there are family chores and home work to boot, this Gatorade is for you.

Published in : Sports, Football

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