{"id":63333,"date":"2025-11-21T07:05:18","date_gmt":"2025-11-21T07:05:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/63333\/"},"modified":"2025-11-21T07:05:18","modified_gmt":"2025-11-21T07:05:18","slug":"as-polys-football-season-crumbles-players-say-they-were-let-down-and-left-in-the-dark-long-beach-post-news-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/63333\/","title":{"rendered":"As Poly\u2019s football season crumbles, players say they were let down and left in the dark \u2022 Long Beach Post News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Poly High School parents and students attended Wednesday\u2019s Long Beach Unified school board meeting to voice outrage, frustration and despair over the Poly football team\u2019s removal from the playoffs and what they see as inadequate communication from the school and district.<\/p>\n

Natalia Lima, the parent of a senior who played right guard at Poly until his season was cut short last month, spoke during public comment about the \u201cnever-ending nightmare\u201d she and her son have endured.<\/p>\n

Lima rewound the tape to September, when six Poly football transfers were flagged for review by CIF, as The 562 reported<\/a>. Poly would go on to forfeit multiple games as a result of the transfer saga<\/a>, yet weeks would pass before Lima received \u201cone of the scariest calls of my life,\u201d she said. On October 31, she said she picked up the phone during what should have been football practice: \u201cMy son says it\u2019s all over. No more football.\u201d<\/p>\n

The school administration had decided to voluntarily pull Poly from the CIF playoffs.<\/p>\n

Lima said she drove to pick up her son and arrived to a group of sobbing players \u2013 without any adults from the football program present. Since then, she and other parents have been fighting for information and accountability, which has come out in trickles, she said.<\/p>\n

Following public comment on Wednesday, Superintendent Jill Baker read a statement that had been released to the Poly community earlier that day. Baker said that the district had conducted an internal investigation into violations of CIF Bylaw 202<\/a>, which has to do with player eligibility, and \u201cconfirmed that three coaches engaged in unethical conduct\u201d inconsistent with CIF rules.<\/p>\n

Of those, two had been relieved of all coaching duties, Baker said, and one, Justin Utupo, had resigned, according to reporting by The 562<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But in interviews with the Long Beach Post, multiple parents and players called the district\u2019s statement insufficient.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur issue isn\u2019t the reason why we\u2019ve been sanctioned or why we\u2019ve gotten in trouble,\u201d said parent Derek Bordeaux. Rather, he is frustrated with the lack of clear, timely, transparent communication from the school and district.<\/p>\n

\"\"Derek Bordeaux returns to his seat after addressing the Long Beach Unified School District board. Photo by Thomas R. Cordova.<\/p>\n

Bordeaux has had four sons and two nephews go through the Poly football program. All of them, except for his youngest son, a current senior, have earned CIF championship rings, Bordeaux said. Now, his son won\u2019t get the chance. The football banquet is canceled, and awards from the season may arrive in the mail, he said. He said his son is heartbroken.<\/p>\n

Poly athletes are \u201cbeing punished by the selfishness of adults,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Multiple parents told the Post that if information had been shared with parents and athletes in real time, students might have been able to transfer to other schools to salvage their seasons.<\/p>\n

For Lima\u2019s son, Demei Donahue, this year was critical. \u201cI was trying to get my education out of this,\u201d he said at the board meeting two weeks prior. \u201cThis is some people\u2019s only ticket out.\u201d Last night, he said he\u2019s considering not playing football at all \u2014 the playoffs would have been an opportunity to show colleges what he is capable of.<\/p>\n

The sense of community and caring for athletes that drew Bronson Diaz to play for Poly has \u201cvanished,\u201d he said. The firing of coaches does not make up for what happened, he said, echoing other adults in the Poly community, including Lima and Ana Meni, who spoke at the board meeting two weeks ago.<\/p>\n

\"\"Bronson Diaz, a sophomore at Poly High School, speaks to the Long Beach Unified School Board. Photo by Thomas R. Cordova.<\/p>\n

Meni asked if this was a broader issue reflective of how the Poly athletic director and administration operate, a problem that could continue to affect athletes next year and beyond \u2014 one that would not be solved by the removal of coaches.<\/p>\n

Across both board meetings, parents and students asked the school board and district, often through tears, what options these student-athletes would have next year and how the district would ensure this never happened again.<\/p>\n

In line with California law<\/a>, when members of the public spoke on items not on the agenda, board members remained silent in the face of these questions. The district\u2019s general counsel, Jeffrey Riel, acknowledged that a request had been submitted to add an item related to Poly football to last night\u2019s agenda. Lima told the Post that the request came from her \u2014 and added that she was told she had not submitted it in time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Poly High School parents and students attended Wednesday\u2019s Long Beach Unified school board meeting to voice outrage, frustration…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63165,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,133,132],"class_list":["post-63333","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\/63333","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=63333"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63333\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}