The562’s Poly and football coverage for the 2026-27 school year is sponsored by Long Beach Poly alums Wendell “WoWo” Moe, Jr. & Tyson Ruffins.
The562’s coverage of Lakewood Athletics is sponsored by J.P. Crawford, Class of 2013.
It’s hard to imagine a team in the nation that’s more excited for the start of league play than Long Beach Poly, as the Jackrabbits (2-4) host Lakewood on Friday night at Cabrillo at 7pm. The Jackrabbits are coming off a grueling nonleague schedule that’s seen them play four of the top 30 teams in the CIF-SS, according to the HSRatings website that’s used to create playoff divisions at the end of the year.
In addition to that, Monday of this week marked the end of the Sit-Out Period in the CIF, meaning that several Jackrabbits transfer players who’ve sat the last six games are now eligible for the rest of the season.
“It’s the second part of the season, we fought hard in the preseason and we dealt with a lot of things that were difficult,” said Poly coach Travon Patterson. “But now we move into the second half of our season, we get our guys back, and everyone is moving with a lot of energy and enthusiasm right now, ready to go.”
Lakewood (2-4) is also welcoming the league schedule after a tough nonleague slate, even if it does mean opening up on the road against Poly. Lancers coach Mario Morales acknowledged it’s a different thing in high school football playing a team after the SOP date, because what’s on film is different than what might be on the field.
“We certainly have thought about it, but at the end of the day the 11 guys on the field is who you’re going to compete against,” he said. “We can only control what we’re going to control. The dynamic is a little different, the best we can do is coach them up and be prepared for any scenario that plays out.”
Among the players eligible for Poly are sophomore quarterback Trevor Scott, who carries offers from UCLA and others, as well as defensive stud Sevelino Taliauli, committed to Colorado State. Both are among several players expected to make an impact for Poly. It’s possible that some of Poly’s narrow losses could have been wins with the players they’re getting back. Patterson said his program isn’t concerned with that, and are happy with the lessons learned.
“You have to take the good with the bad, we learned a lot from those situations and it definitely made us a better team,” he said. “It created depth on our end as well because we had to lean a lot on younger guys playing against some top teams. It made us better coaches as well dealing with all the adversity.”
Morales said his team was aware it would be a challenging nonleague but also was happy with how it went despite a losing record.
“We saw a lot of positive things from our players, they kept competing, they weren’t scoreboard watching,” he said. “Nobody in our league was playing slouches, I think we all have the mentality in our league of we have to play good programs. We’ve gotten some good things out of it.”
Morales has been happy with the jobs that Terrish Weston and Thales Nguyen have done for his team; Weston has four interceptions in five games while Nguyen is a bullying hard-nosed running back.
