From the first practice to the last, Braiden McKenna was the true leader of Los Alamitos\u2019 offensive live. It was his job to help a young group in its first season of starting to develop with each game.<\/p>\n
McKenna led the way, playing center and helping guide a line that consistently opened lanes for running backs Lenny Ibarra and Kamden Tillis, both of whom reached 1,000 yards rushing during a 12-3 season. It was a key part for the Griffins winning the Southern Section Division 2 championship, their first title since 2002.<\/p>\n
The 6-foot-2, 290-pound senior has been selected The Times\u2019 lineman of the year.<\/p>\n
He was a three-year starter who was asked to make calls up front with his intelligence, vision and instincts.<\/p>\n
Coach Ray Fenton said he graded out at 93% from a coaching staff that keeps high expectations for its blockers.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe physically dominated the line of scrimmage,\u201d Fenton said.<\/p>\n
There was one opponent who said of McKenna: \u201cYou are crazy strong.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From the first practice to the last, Braiden McKenna was the true leader of Los Alamitos\u2019 offensive live.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":103782,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[56350,11440,56353,42921,56354,56351,15722,56352,45158,48,52,51,21023,17306,47,50,49,30258,1791,5965,72],"class_list":["post-103781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-braiden-mckenna","tag-championship","tag-coach-ray-fenton","tag-first-season","tag-first-title","tag-football-lineman","tag-front","tag-instinct","tag-intelligence","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-line","tag-los-alamitos","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-southern-section-division","tag-times","tag-vision","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103781"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103781\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}