U9 Boys / Girls Soccer

This last Saturday I went out to shoot some youth soccer for a local league. I covered both the boys and girls U9 game. Unfortunately neither team did very well, which made it a bit hard to get some nice action shots of the teams I was shooting. Most of the action was going away from me or while the team I was covering was defending their goal (not a lot of open field action with either team), although I was still able to come away with some decent action shots.

Boys U9

Girls U9

Lakewood Varsity Football vs Poly

I'm going on five years of capturing football action at Lakewood and the one game that these two schools, let alone the league, look forward to is Lakewood and Poly. This will give the winner bragging rights for the coming year and an almost guarantee league champ title.

This brings us to this weeks game. Although this was scheduled as a home game for Lakewood, the game was played at Veteran's Stadium in Long Beach due to the expected amount of fan participation. Now I must say I was excited and somewhat nervous for Lakewood, but that quickly changed. As the game progressed it was obvious that Poly came to play some football and bring home a win. This was a very tough came to shoot as I watched Poly control the game both running and passing. Although Lakewood attempted to mount a comeback, they just couldn't get past Poly's defense.

I know there is going to be a lot of trash talking on the various sports blogs / sites in Long Beach, but I must say congratulations to Poly. You all played a great game and deserved the win. Hopefully you and Lakewood will meet again in the playoffs. Either way it's bound to be a great game of high school football.

Let's start with a couple of shots from the cheer leaders.

Lakewood Freshmen Football vs Poly

This is the week to watch football. This week it's all about Lakewood and Poly who will compete and pretty much decide who will come out on top for Moore League.

Yesterday I covered the freshmen game, which I have to say I was late to. I took my son, who had a late class for college to lunch. While driving home we noticed that Millikan's team was on the field with Wilson getting ready for their game. So a quick drive by at Lakewood show them on the field as well. I should have known that it was going to be an early game since it was back to school night at the high schools, so I we went home, grabbed my gear and headed back to Lakewood. They were mid 2nd half when I got there.

Even though I was late I was still able to capture some nice shots of a tough played game between Lakewood and Poly. This game went back and fourth with Lakewood edging out Poly 26 to 22.

This first shot is two of the varsity cheerleaders who were practicing with the freshmen cheerleaders during halftime. Their always willing to smile for the camera.

Now for some action.

Lakewood Varsity Football vs Compton

This marks Lakewood opening game for league play and finds them at Compton High.

Although Lakewood started off slow, they quickly picked up momentum and never stopped, with a 37-0 victory over Compton.

During one of Lakewood's prior Friday Night Games I took a picture of this very pretty young lady, but as things go with lighting and night games it didn't come out at all and was eventually deleted. She came up to me during the JV game (day prior) and asked about the picture. I felt bad telling her that I had to delete the picture and promised her I would take some shots of her during this game. So here is one of my favorites of her from the night.

These are always fun shots.

I wanted to change up my team warm-up routine and get some shots of some of the other players that I normally don't cover. Here are two shots of two linemen during warm up.

Now on to the action, enjoy and thanks from coming by.

Lakewood JV Football vs Compton

This marks the first Moore league season game for the JV team as well as it being the first full game I covered for them this year.

This also marks the first group of pictures edited on my new laptop. I've been having a lot of little issues with my current laptop and have been thinking of buying a new system for some time now. So I went out and got a new system as well as upgrading from CS2 to CS5 and from Lightroom 2 to Lightroom 3. So needless to say I had a bit to relearn so to speak when editing this game. The biggest thing I see looking at these shots is their quite dark, so know that I will get that worked out and hopefully soon. Just need to get used to the new system.

Ok, back to the game. This started out as a slow game for both sides but ended with Lakewood running away with it with a 40-12 win over Compton.