Breakers open football season today

Mike Sciacca

The Laguna Beach High varsity football team gets an early start on

the season as the Breakers begin their 2003 campaign today against

Palos Verdes.

Game time is 3 p.m. at Palos Verdes High.

Laguna doesn’t have much to go on when it comes to the Sea Kings,

who are resuming varsity football after the school closed its doors

in at the conclusion of the 1989-90 school year.

The 1989 season was the last time Palos Verdes fielded a varsity

football team.

The school re-opened last fall with only freshmen and sophomores.

This year it will have freshman, sophomore and junior classes.

The school closed in 1990, Palos Verdes Athletic Director John

Barr said, as part of the consolidation of the Palos Verdes Unified

School District.

Students from Palos Verdes High, Miraleste High and Rolling Hills

High were then consolidated into a newly-formed high school,

Peninsula.

All Palos Verde home games will be played at 3 p.m. because the

stadium doesn’t have lights.

Palos Verdes began the 2003-04 school year Wednesday.

“We’re back and excited to be playing varsity football again,”

Barr said. “Football sets the tone for the entire school year. The

kids, from the players to pep squad members and our entire student

body, have worked hard for this moment. Everybody’s wound up for

this.”

Laguna, meanwhile, is coming off a 2002 season -- its 68th year of

football -- that saw the school qualify for the CIF Southern Section

playoffs for the first time since 1987.

They went 4-6 overall in 2002 and lost to eventual champion La

Habra in the first-round of the Division IX playoffs.

The Breakers lost several key players from that team to graduation

but return all-Pacific Coast League players in quarterback Alex

Wilson, Jake Wheeler, a receiver/defensive back/quarterback and Brett

O’Connor, a tight end/linebacker.

“We’re ready to go,” Laguna coach Dave Holland said during Hell

Week practices last week. “They kids have worked very hard in the

off-season and I’m real proud of their effort.”