{"id":61500,"date":"2025-11-20T04:18:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-20T04:18:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/61500\/"},"modified":"2025-11-20T04:18:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-20T04:18:07","slug":"long-beach-poly-football-coach-justin-utupo-out-after-internal-investigation-press-telegram","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/61500\/","title":{"rendered":"Long Beach Poly football coach Justin Utupo out after internal investigation \u2013 Press Telegram"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Long Beach Poly football head coach Justin Utupo is out after his first season concluded with an internal investigation of the program, according to the Long Beach Unified School District on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>The district said an investigation confirmed that three coaches, including Utupo, engaged in unethical conduct inconsistent with CIF eligibility rules. All three are no longer coaching in the district.<\/p>\n<p>Utupo said he formally resigned before he learned of the results of the district\u2019s investigation.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI resigned from my position before being made aware of the district\u2019s findings,\u201d Utupo said. \u201cThere is conflict in regard to the sequence of events in which the district publicly announced. I hope the district honorably corrects their statement based on the truths of the events. However, I wish nothing but the best for the Long Beach community in which I served, the families, the students and staff.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Utupo was hired in January and went 5-5 overall in his lone season as the team\u2019s head coach. Poly had to forfeit a win and six transfers were declared ineligible in late September. The school announced on Oct. 31 that it had\u00a0 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.presstelegram.com\/2025\/10\/31\/long-beach-poly-football-withdraws-from-cif-ss-playoffs-due-to-violations\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">withdrawn from the CIF-SS playoffs<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Utupo is also former head coach at Lakewood and Millikan and will no longer be able to coach in LBUSD, according to district officials.<\/p>\n<p>In a news release, district leaders said they will review all athletics programs to \u201censure protocols, training, and expectations are clearly understood and consistently applied.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The district is awaiting final determination from CIF regarding any additional sanctions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Long Beach Poly football head coach Justin Utupo is out after his first season concluded with an internal&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61501,"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-61500","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\/61500","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=61500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61500\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}