This Saturday, two Long Beach high school teams will be playing for the right to be crowned best in all of southern California. Wilson’s girls soccer team will be at Downey High at 3:30, taking on Thousand Oaks, and Poly’s girls basketball team will be taking on the Narbonne Gauchos in the LA Arena at 6, which means you’ll actually be able to get to both games if you hustle. If Poly wins, they advance to the state championship, and if Wilson wins, they’ll be the last team standing in the state (and the country), as Northern California doesn’t field enough teams to participate in state playoffs.<\/p>\n
The Poly Jackrabbits have gotten more coverage, due to their recent dominance (if they win on Saturday they’ll be competing in Sacramento on the 15th for their third consecutive state championship) and due to the fact that they don’t play soccer, but both games are of significance to the local sports scene. For Poly, a win would catapult them to the status of an historic dynasty, clinching their reputation as perhaps the best girls team in the country over the last three years. <\/p>\n
For Wilson, the win would serve a number of purposes. First, it would help bring much-deserved attention to the team, which is ranked number two in the country and is playing for a de facto national championship. Second, it would help erase the bitter taste of a 1-1 co-championship in the CIF Final against San Clemente last weekend. Adding to the intrigue is the fact that San Clemente fans are now claiming that Wilson’s goal wasn’t actually a goal at all, that it did not in fact pass over the goal line, but rather rolled down the top of the net and in. It’s an interesting controversy, and you can read more about it (as well as see a video that does seem to support the no-goal theory) here<\/a>.<\/p>\n It looked as if Wilson would get a chance to prove their superiority on Saturday, but San Clemente lost on Thursday to Thousand Oaks, who had previously defeated number one in the nation Torrey Pines. Thousand Oaks advanced on penalty kicks after regulation expired, so we were a hair’s breadth from seeing Wilson and San Clemente go at it again in another championship game. Still, a win on Saturday over Thousand Oaks, while San Clemente is sitting at home, would be a huge vindication for the Wilson Bruins, proving them the better team, and possibly the best in the country.<\/p><\/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-5890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5890","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=5890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5890\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5890"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=5890"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=5890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}