Poly High School

Raul Lara, your Long Beach Poly Jackrabbits just won the Southern Section Pac-5 Division title. What are you going to do now? He's going to Central Juvenile Hall, actually. That's where the coach of the most storied high school football program in Southern California headed late Saturday night, arriving about two hours after the Jackrabbits polished off a come-from-behind 20-17 victory over Rancho Santa Margarita Tesoro. He was just doing his job -- both of them.

Perennial high school football powerhouses Long Beach Poly and Concord De La Salle are making an impact on the sport that reaches well beyond the prep level, according to figures released Thursday by USA Football, the sport's national governing body. Each school boasted six former players -- the most among high schools nationwide -- who were on 2007 opening-weekend rosters in the NFL.

John Francis Polytechnic High School had an unusual reason to celebrate Monday: Most of its freshmen passed their classes. For the first time in recent memory, the Sun Valley school will enroll more 10th-graders than ninth-graders in the upcoming year because so many students earned enough credits to advance. Poly High's ninth-graders and their teachers closed their successful year with a pancake breakfast and a dance contest featuring hip-hop tunes.

Carl Buggs, girls' basketball coach at Long Beach Poly, knew April Phillips from state regional games played against Harbor City Narbonne. Background player. Good. Nothing like Lisa Willis or Indi Johnson, who starred at Narbonne during Phillips' freshman and sophomore seasons in the South Bay. Frustrated, Phillips says, by "a mutual respect issue" with the Narbonne program, she transferred to Poly about a week into the 2003-04 season.

Gail Goodrich might be the greatest basketball player ever born and raised in Los Angeles. He helped UCLA win its first two NCAA championships, in 1964 and 1965. He led the Lakers in scoring during their championship season in 1971-72 when they won 33 consecutive games. He was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1996.

There may be no high school football coach in Southern California who's a bigger target for fan abuse than Raul Lara of Long Beach Poly. Poly fans expect their team to win every game and every championship, and when it doesn't happen, they want their coach fired. In the Internet chat rooms for high school football, Lara's critics unleash the kind of venom usually reserved for a college or NFL coach. Lara, 37, understood the challenge when he became coach in 2001. "Of course, I knew," he said.

There will be much more than a Prep League victory and school pride on the line Monday when Flintridge Prep plays Pasadena Poly in golf at Brookside Golf Course. The "Mystic Niblick" is at stake. The Mystic Niblick, a hickory-shafted antique golf club, is the trophy awarded to the winner of the season series between the rival schools. A tradition started 12 years ago by Flintridge Prep Coach Bob Loughrie, the niblick is taken seriously by both teams.

A group of musicians is shooting the breeze at V.I.P. Records, a hangout for rappers across the street from Long Beach Polytechnic High School, when Poly's cross-country team runs by. "You never would have seen that 20 years ago," says Kirk Jones, a former National Football League player who graduated from Poly in 1984. The group at the record store is African American. Nearly all of the two dozen runners on the cross-country team are white. Jones points to the team with pride.

Poly High was removed from the City Section boys' soccer playoffs Tuesday after using an ineligible player in a 1-0 quarterfinal victory over Birmingham on Friday. The third-seeded Parrots, the highest remaining seeded team in the section playoffs, were scheduled to host 10th-seeded Bell in a semifinal Tuesday. Instead, 11th-seeded Birmingham will play at Bell at 3 p.m. today.