Mike Guardabascio has covered countless football games at Veterans Stadium. Photo by Matt Cohn.

It’s a living history Long Beach journalist Mike Guardabascio has documented in his new book Football in Long Beach. And had he waited a few months to write it, he could have included yet another dramatic championship season by Poly. The Jackrabbits and their 104-year-old football history are the centerpiece of the book, but Guardabascio, co-editor of the Gazette Newspapers’ sports section, also sheds light on the football achievements of the other Moore League schools and provides thorough looks into the rich gridiron histories of St. Anthony High School, LBCC and CSULB.

Guardabascio has combined his literary and journalistic skills to paint pictures of a time when the Poly-Wilson game drew 30,000 people and had to be played at the Rose Bowl; of an era when head coach Jim “The Colonel” Stangeland would hold CSULB training camp at the Long Beach Naval Base and subject his players to four two-hour practices a day, bookended by two two-mile runs; and of a football player named Dee Andrews who excelled at Poly, LBCC, and CSULB, then went on to become the current 6th District Councilman of Long Beach.

Football in Long Beach is, of course, a sports history, but Guardabascio is careful to frame each era of Long Beach football in the context of “The Bigger Picture” at the time: A flu epidemic, a catastrophic earthquake, two world wars and various forms of social unrest have all made their marks on Long Beach football history.

National Champ LBCC playing hard-nosed football in 1950. Photo courtesy of Mike Guardabascio.

“I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was 10,” says Guardabascio, who studied English Literature at CSULB before writing about sports for the Post and then moving on to the Gazettes. “I just kind of fell into sports.” Undoubtedly,Poly’s C.I.F. championships in three out of the four years Mike was a student there (fall ’98 through spring 2002) were a source of tremendous inspiration. “I knew guys on the teams. We had five All-Americans in my graduating class. Three players from that one class (Darnell Bing, Winston Justice, and Marcedes Lewis) went to the NFL.”

Those three players are included in the book’s list of 64 Poly grads who went on to the NFL–the most of any high school in the nation. Other former Jackrabbits on the list include Carl Weathers (Apollo Creed in the early Rocky films), Willie McGinest, all-pro linebacker and three-time Super Bowl winner with the New England Patriots, and Norman “Red” Franklin, a running back who helped bring Poly its 4th C.I.F. trophy in 1929 and played for the Brooklyn Dodgers of the NFL a few years later.

Colorful lore emerges throughout the book: Wilson beating Poly for the first time in 1943 on a field lined with soldiers, who partied all over town that night; Jordan’s Lorenza Coronado catching a touchdown pass in a game in 1995 and becoming the first high school girl in California ever to do so; Legendary Long Beach flyboy Earl S. Daugherty dropping the game ball from a plane before Poly’s 1920 American Southwest Championship battle against the Phoenix Coyotes. Guardabascio acknowledges all players and coaches who have contributed to the rich Long Beach football tradition.

Poly’s first football team, 1908. Photo courtesy of Mike Guardabascio.

At the Gazettes, Mike uses new-school methods like live Twitter updates and digital video, but he also “covers the beat” like an old-school reporter, attending practices and events and doing in-person interviews. He estimates that he and his Gazettes co-editor J.J. Fiddler each put in up to 80 hours a week covering Long Beach sports.

Despite these grueling work weeks, Guardabascio also finds time to tend to his duties as vice-president of the Century Club, a Long Beach non-profit organization co-founded in 1957 by the aforementioned Jim Stangeland, who was head coach of LBCC football at the time. The club provides assistance to amateur athletes and has helped Long Beach legends like Billie Jean King and Misty May-Treanor.

Last summer, the Gazettes sent Mike and J.J. to London to cover CSULB alum May-Treanor’s quest for a third consecutive gold medal in beach volleyball. He saw all of Misty and partner Kerri Walsh’s matches in the stunning mid-London venue. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” he says. “Some of the matches didn’t start until 11PM, so it was a party every night.”

Mike has just finished covering the longest season in California prep football history, and he’s happy that Poly’s success this year has brought Football in Long Beach considerable attention. He has gained the respect of the Poly football organization and was recently asked to brief the offensive linemen about the school’s football heritage. Perhaps his book will become required reading for new Jackrabbits. “This is the book I wish I had available to me when I was a student,” says Guardabascio.

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Football in Long Beach, published by The History Press, is available at all local bookstores.