{"id":482002,"date":"2026-10-01T21:30:07","date_gmt":"2026-10-01T21:30:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/482002\/"},"modified":"2026-10-01T21:30:07","modified_gmt":"2026-10-01T21:30:07","slug":"preview-long-beach-poly-football-vs-lakewood-the562-org","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/482002\/","title":{"rendered":"PREVIEW: Long Beach Poly Football vs Lakewood \u2013 The562.org"},"content":{"rendered":"

The562\u2019s Poly and football coverage for the 2026-27 school year is sponsored by Long Beach Poly alums\u00a0Wendell \u201cWoWo\u201d Moe, Jr. & Tyson Ruffins.<\/a><\/p>\n

The562\u2019s coverage of Lakewood Athletics is sponsored by\u00a0J.P. Crawford, Class of 2013<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to imagine a team in the nation that\u2019s 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\u2019s seen them play four of the top 30 teams in the CIF-SS, according to the HSRatings website that\u2019s used to create playoff divisions at the end of the year.<\/p>\n

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\u2019ve sat the last six games are now eligible for the rest of the season.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the second part of the season, we fought hard in the preseason and we dealt with a lot of things that were difficult,\u201d said Poly coach Travon Patterson. \u201cBut 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2019s a different thing in high school football playing a team after the SOP date, because what\u2019s on film is different than what might be on the field.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe certainly have thought about it, but at the end of the day the 11 guys on the field is who you\u2019re going to compete against,\u201d he said. \u201cWe can only control what we\u2019re 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2019s possible that some of Poly\u2019s narrow losses could have been wins with the players they\u2019re getting back. Patterson said his program isn\u2019t concerned with that, and are happy with the lessons learned.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to take the good with the bad, we learned a lot from those situations and it definitely made us a better team,\u201d he said. \u201cIt 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Morales said his team was aware it would be a challenging nonleague but also was happy with how it went despite a losing record.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe saw a lot of positive things from our players, they kept competing, they weren\u2019t scoreboard watching,\u201d he said. \u201cNobody in our league was playing slouches, I think we all have the mentality in our league of we have to play good programs. We\u2019ve gotten some good things out of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The562\u2019s Poly and football coverage for the 2026-27 school year is sponsored by Long Beach Poly alums\u00a0Wendell \u201cWoWo\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":482003,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,133,132],"class_list":["post-482002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482002","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=482002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482002\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/482003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=482002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=482002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=482002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}