It’s spring time for prep football

By OC Tribune Staff on March 1, 2021 • ( Leave a comment )

MARINA VIKINGS won the 2019 Division 11 CIF-SS football crown, The Vikes will start a spring football campaign on Friday, March 12 against Huntington Beach High (Orange County Tribune photo by Jim Tortolano).

In a sports year like no other, area high schools have finally gotten approval to begin interscholastic athletics, and it’s all about to start a lot faster than you might have thought.

Of course, the highest profile sport is football, and athletic directors and coaches are scrambling to put together the first spring gridiron schedule in Southern California history.

We’ve tried to piece together what’s known about who will play whom when and where, but the details are soft and subject to change. Some schools have cobbled together a plan for as many as seven games while some only have two lined up yet.

In a couple of instances, schools have lined up two opponents on the same day, a condition almost certain to change. As per CIF-SS guidelines, there will be no playoffs as schools try to cram in as many sports seasons into four months as they used to in nine or 10.

The schedule isn’t the only thing that will be different. Attendance by fans will be severely limited or eliminated, face coverings and social distancing – to the extent practical – will be enforced. Cheerleaders and snack bars … pretty unlikely.

What appears below – details about football openers for teams serving the area of Garden Grove, Huntington Beach, Stanton and Westminster – is not to be leaned upon too heavily; most of the information comes from maxpreps.com, but other parts come from school websites. Some of what we’ve garnered is subject to change; it’s certainly subject to addition.

But, however ad hoc things might be, it’s nice to see high school sports reappearing. Aside from the benefit of young athletes getting a chance to play, the coming of this most unusual sports “year” is a welcome sign that normality – or a piece of it – may be just around the corner.

Play ball!