{"id":130891,"date":"2026-01-13T00:26:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-13T00:26:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/130891\/"},"modified":"2026-01-13T00:26:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-13T00:26:07","slug":"long-beach-poly-football-hires-travon-patterson-as-new-head-coach-press-telegram","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/130891\/","title":{"rendered":"Long Beach Poly football hires Travon Patterson as new head coach \u2013 Press Telegram"},"content":{"rendered":"

Travon Patterson has been hired as the new head coach of the Long Beach Poly football team, the school\u2019s boys athletic director Rob Shock confirmed Monday afternoon.<\/p>\n

Patterson, who served as Poly\u2019s associate head coach last season, is the program\u2019s third head coach in 14 months.<\/p>\n

He is the school\u2019s first alum to lead the program since 2013.<\/p>\n

The 37-year-old is a 2006 Poly graduate. He played high school football for former coach Raul Lara and college football for Pete Carroll at USC before transferring to Colorado for his senior season.<\/p>\n

The former receiver also spent time playing professionally in the NFL with the Chargers and in the CFL with the Montreal Alouettes. He is a realtor in Long Beach and will be a walk-on coach.<\/p>\n

Patterson replaces Justin Utupo, who was the team\u2019s head coach for one season before being ousted in November after an internal investigation<\/a> related to CIF eligibility rules. Utupo replaced former coach Stephen Barbee, who resigned in December 2024.<\/p>\n

Poly went 6-6 in 2024 under Barbee and 5-5 last season under Utupo.<\/p>\n

The Jackrabbits finished second in the Moore League the past two seasons.<\/p>\n

They had to forfeit a nonleague win and six transfer players were declared ineligible in September 2025.<\/p>\n

On Oct. 31, the school announced it had withdrawn from the CIF Southern Section playoffs, less than 48 hours before the brackets were released.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Travon Patterson has been hired as the new head coach of the Long Beach Poly football team, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":130892,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[7,2043,7636,2044,131,133,132,137,127,136],"class_list":["post-130891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-california","tag-high-school-football","tag-high-school-news","tag-high-school-sports","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news","tag-los-angeles-county","tag-sports","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130891","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=130891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130891\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/130892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}