Welcome to the first of many columns written by that mug over there on the right. This site, which I’ve been looking forward to (both as a writer and a reader) couldn’t be launching at a weirder time for me. The main thrust of my coverage will be Long Beach high school sports (for a sample of my Prep coverage, scroll down and check out my articles on the Poly girls basketball team, which I covered as kind of a beta test). However, today, Monday March 31st, is also the day I’m leaving town for about five weeks, on an enormous coast-to-coast road trip with my wife, as kind of a delayed honeymoon.<\/p>\n
While I’m gone for those five weeks, here’s what you can expect: a Prep Roundup, probably twice a week, which will give you a brief rundown of all the major happenings in the city. If you want to know the general shake of things without reading box scores or 1,000 words on one game, this is your place to go, as I’ll keep you up to date on what just happened, and where the big games of the week are going to be. Since I’ll be in other parts of the country, in-depth game coverage won’t be a part of this column just yet; once I get back, I promise to knock your proverbial socks off. In place of that coverage, I’ll be writing a series of tongue-in-cheek articles called Mike Across America<\/em>, where I’ll cover random sports scenes on the long road between here and Washington DC. I’ll cover games, visit landmarks, and quite possibly get arrested for desecrating a hated stadium. It’ll be a blast, and, I hope, a great way for you to get to know me.<\/p>\n Like I said, I’m incredibly excited about this site. I grew up playing sports in this city, and it means so much to me as a Long Beach native to see a group like this bring the enthusiasm to our local sports scene that it deserves. Please, come back early and often: we won’t disappoint you. If you have any feedback, drop a comment at the bottom and I’ll take a look at it.<\/p>\n See you on the road!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-5874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5874\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5874"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=5874"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=5874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}