Welcome home.
A Long Beach Poly assistant football coach offered a warm greeting to Mater Dei football coach Raul Lara on Saturday morning before the start of a summer passing tournament at Poly.
Lara, a Poly graduate who won five Southern Section championships in 13 seasons as the Jackrabbits head coach, was struck by some of the changes he saw, such as an all-weather sports field and bungalows on the old baseball field. The school has begun a $450-million construction project.
I havent been here in a while, Lara said. Theyre doing a lot of reconstruction. Its pretty neat. It will be interesting when its completed. We didnt have this. We had a dirt track, regular grass field. We used to have a pole by those two trash cans and we had a coach, Don Norford, that every time he yelled, Hit the pole, everybody knew they were in trouble.
Lara won a Southern Section Division 1 title and state championship last season in his first year at Mater Dei, and his team is a heavy favorite to repeat thanks to strong offensive and defensive lines as well as a receiving group that includes receiver Chris Henry Jr., who has commited to Ohio State, and tight end Mark Bowman, who has committed to USC.
“That group is special,” he said of his receiver group that includes Ohio State commit Kayden Dixon-Wyatt, Georgia commit Gavin Honore and senior Koen Parnell.
Still to be decided is who starts at quarterback, with Wisconsin commit Ryan Hopkins competing with Minnesota commit Furian Inferrera. Asked if he could end up playing both, Lara said it was possible.
Asked if he was still having fun, Lara said, “It’s a different kind of fun. Its more of a CEO fun. I have an awesome staff. All I do is make sure it’s functioning. They do a fantastic job.”
Saturday’s competition featured a rarity in that three outstanding tight ends were in the spotlight Bowman, a USC commit; Andre Nickerson of Inglewood, an SMU commit; Jaden Hernandez of Poly, a Colorado State commit. Defensive backs were pushing and shoving and the tight ends were having none of that.
Mayfair has two college-bound defensive backs in Chaz Gilbreath (UC Davis) and Miles Mitchell (Air Force). Mitchell has a 4.5 grade-point average.
Poly’s Donte Wright is a junior cornerback committed to Georgia with a big upside because he’s 6 feet 2 and still growing with track speed.
Teams are winding down their summer seven-on-seven passing tournament schedules. Coaches are starting to pass out shoulder pads because official practice begins July 28.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.