Poly Varsity Football vs Mission Viejo

Week 4

Poly vs Mission Viejo 

I have been very loyal to Lakewood High School and have been covering them through the good and the bad.  I've watched as their football program has slowly declined do to many reasons, which I won't discuss here.  With that being said and in the end I shoot football for our local paper, the Long Beach Gazette.  This year has been a rough one thus far, which means its been very rough capturing the action when your school isn't really giving you any, so needless to say when I was requested to cover the Poly game this past Friday I jumped at the opportunity.  Well I am now regretting that.

Poly is the Moore Leagues top school when it comes to sports in general and has dominated football for at least a decade plus.  I expected this game to be action packed with a lot of opportunities to capture it, but as it turned out the action was minimal on both sides of the ball and for both teams.

Additionally Poly's sideline was packed with everyone with people that really had no business being there and I'm surprised its not more controlled, but when all was said and done I did manage to get the shots I wanted, even if it meant squeezing in between people to get it.

Now above I said I regretted covering the Poly game over Lakewood.  The final score for Poly was 7-12 and the final score for Lakewood was 39-49.  I have stuck with Lakewood through it all and should have been there with them for their past game.  Never again if I have any say about.  Now don't get me wrong, I will continue to shoot what the Gazette requests me to cover and will always shoot a Poly game when able, but if I do have a choice, it will stay with Lakewood.

Here are my favorite shots from the game.

Lakewood Football vs Mission Viejo - 2nd Round CIF Playoffs

If you would like to view and order pictures from this game just click on the above title.

Here we are in the second round of the CIF playoffs. I personally didn't think we would get this far. Don't get me wrong, my son goes to Lakewood and I support them all the way, but with the way they've played this season I really didn't think we would make it past the first round of the playoffs. The first round, which I missed due to having a severe sinus infection, was against Servite at Cerritos College. That game ended at 35-34 with a victory for Lakewood and brought our next game home. There was a lot of talk about Mission Viejo's quarterback and how good he was, but our defense came ready to play and played hard football. The penetrated the line and put a lot of pressure on Mission Viejo's quarterback. Offense started off slow but picked it up in the second half and dominated the field. I can't wait till next week when we meet Poly for the second time this season. I do feel it's necessary to say "Stand by Poly, Lakewood is a different team then when we met the first time"

I always try to get some decent shots of the quarterback during a game. I was able to get some nice shots of Mission Viejo's quarterback but not too many of Lakewood's.

"The Coach"

This shot was taken just prior to kickoff and thought it was a great look. It says it all about the competition and what it takes to manage and get a team to this stage. See in next week in the semi-finals against Poly.