{"id":72,"date":"2018-10-25T09:45:54","date_gmt":"2018-10-25T16:45:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/?p=999923439"},"modified":"2018-10-25T09:45:54","modified_gmt":"2018-10-25T16:45:54","slug":"long-beach-state-football-poly-high","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/long-beach-state-football-poly-high","title":{"rendered":"Former football players Andy Fee, Stephen Barbee reunite in Long Beach"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
The Dana Hills varsity football team in 1990. Courtesy photo.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Long Beach sports aficionados might not have spent much time thinking about the Dana Hills football team.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s understandable. There are no rivalries between local high schools, and for the not-so-fiercely-named Dolphins, no big playoff history. But there is a bizarre coincidental link between the Dana Hills program and two of Long Beach\u2019s most prominent sports positions.<\/p>\n

The photo at the top of this post is the Dana Hills varsity football team in 1990. Two players on that team would go on to have successful careers in sports that spanned the width of the country. As of this year those careers brought the two teammates together again in Long Beach.<\/p>\n

In the front row wearing jersey No. 14 is a backup quarterback named Andy Fee, now the athletic director at Long Beach State. In the second row from the top all the way to the right is a sophomore safety wearing No. 21\u2014that\u2019s Stephen Barbee, now the head football coach at Long Beach Poly.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow weird is that?\u201d chuckled Barbee in a recent interview.<\/p>\n

Dolphins<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dana Hills\u2019 1990 team was good but not great. It was the only year that Fee and Barbee were on the varsity team together. Barbee would continue on in the sport but Fee moved on to golf in his senior year, a skill that would end up being much more useful to him professionally.<\/p>\n

Head coach Don Douglass took the Dolphins to the CIF championship game in \u201891, and Fee was right to think he wouldn\u2019t make it as the team\u2019s starting quarterback. That squad was led by QB Scott Covington, who ended up playing at Miami and in the NFL.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere weren\u2019t a lot of similarities between that team and Long Beach,\u201d said Barbee. \u201cBut it was a very tight group of kids, and like Long Beach kids there was a good brotherhood. Andy and I are 25 years removed from that team and we\u2019re still friends, that was a really tight team.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been almost 30 years and we\u2019re still teammates, we\u2019re still supporting each other,\u201d said Fee.<\/p>\n

Barbee<\/strong><\/p>\n

After playing free safety for the Dana Hills varsity squad his sophomore and junior year, Barbee left the homogenous confines of South Orange County and moved to Maryland, where he played his senior year of high school football at a school that was a lot more like Poly: bigger, more racially diverse, and with more tradition.<\/p>\n

He worked his way back to California and has had experience coaching at the polar extremes\u2014before getting the Poly job he coached at St. Margaret\u2019s, a small, affluent private school less than 5 miles from Dana Hills.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe great thing about football, at Dana Hills or at St. Margaret\u2019s or at Poly, is that the guys you go through it with become some of your best friends,\u201d said Barbee. \u201cI tell my kids that all the time. It\u2019s like that with me and Andy\u2014you\u2019ll go on a different path than each other but when you meet up again it\u2019ll be like a day hasn\u2019t passed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fee<\/b><\/p>\n

Fee attended school at Dana Hills with another big Long Beach sports figure.<\/p>\n

\u201cBrent Hilliard was actually a senior when I was a freshman,\u201d Fee said, referencing the future Long Beach State Hall of Fame volleyball player. Another quarterback on the 1990 team now lives in Long Beach with his family, and Fee bumped into him at a Long Beach State soccer game last weekend.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a really small world, you would never draw it up and think this is how it would be,\u201d said Fee.<\/p>\n

After high school, Fee went to Arizona State for college and began his work in athletic administration there, continuing at the University of San Diego and UC Santa Barbara before landing the head job at Long Beach State. Along the way his golf skills have come in handy, obviously.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was a clipboard-holding, backup quarterback,\u201d said Fee. \u201cI knew what my role was on the team\u2014I was great at signaling in calls. I always tell our athletes, all of us have an end to our playing careers\u2014mine was pretty early.\u201d<\/p>\n

Long Beach<\/b><\/p>\n

Neither man is surprised at the other\u2019s success. Barbee said that Fee was always organized and interested in leadership, and Fee said Barbee\u2019s love of football and knowledge of the game made it obvious even in high school that he\u2019d go into coaching.<\/p>\n

The two had the chance to reconnect a few weeks ago at Poly\u2019s game against Jordan in North Long Beach, the first night Fee didn\u2019t have a Long Beach State event to attend on a Friday night. They talked before the game, congratulated each other on their successes, and laughed at how strange it was they ended up together again.<\/p>\n

While the journeys they\u2019ve taken have been separate, the two do have a similar approach to their jobs.<\/p>\n

Fee has been determined since he arrived in Long Beach to end the \u201cEast Long Beach State\u201d image that the university has<\/a> and reconnect the school to Poly and Jordan and the other Long Beach schools and neighborhoods that have been missing. Barbee, too, has a community-first bridge-building approach that led him to stock his coaching staff with Poly alums from top to bottom, and to take the Poly team to volunteer at local hospitals during the offseason.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think because of how we grew up we understand how strong a commitment to your community is,\u201d said Barbee. \u201cNot only for the strength of your program but for its longevity and for things outside of sports.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe grew up surrounded by family and community, that\u2019s not just lip service,\u201d said Fee. \u201cIt\u2019s meaningful. We were lucky enough to grow up in a true community and we\u2019re lucky enough to find ourselves together again in another one.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“We were lucky enough to grow up in a true community and we\u2019re lucky enough to find ourselves together again in another one.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":16429,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","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":[9],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-72","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-long-beach-state","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72","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\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=72"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=72"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}