Story and photos by Matt Guardabascio.

The first “real” game might be almost three months away, but two local Moore League football teams faced their first competition on Saturday, as Poly and Lakewood entered the Dana Hills Air Strike Passing League, along with other SoCal powerhouses Los Al, Oaks Christian, Mater Dei, Tesoro, St. Bonaventure, and Edison.  For Lakewood, the goal was to continue to refine the chemistry between returning starting QB Jesse Scroggins (rated by ESPN as one of the best HS QBs in the nation) and his receiving corps; for Poly, the goal was to help find out who the heck will be wearing the green and gold, following the graduation of almost every single starter.

For Lakewood, they started the day off with a win over Santa Margarita, before falling to St. Bonny to put them in the loser’s bracket, where they defeated San Clemente and Narbonne, before being bumped from competition in a rematch loss to St. Bonny that kept them from reaching the quarterfinals.

The Jackrabbits, with a lot of sophomores, looked for leadership and struggled to find it early, losing their first two games to Los Al and Trabuco.  Head coach Raul Lara was fired up after the Trabuco loss, saying, “We need to take the diapers off, grow up, and make plays.  If everybody makes their plays, we win the game.”  The ‘Rabbits perked their ears up and rebounded with two straight wins.

The first, against Mater Dei, proved that no matter how young the team, the sight of Monarch Red will always get Poly fired up.  Cameron Jackson returned the opening Mater Dei pass for a touchdown, perhaps showing that Poly will be defensively-driven once more this season.  Sophomore quarterback Derek Stewart looked good in the Mater Dei win, and a victory over Dana Hills before Oaks Christian knocked them out, also one game away from the quarterfinals.

After the final game, Lara said, “We’re starting to find out who to go to,” which is the most a coach of a young team could hope to gain from a passing league game.  “We’ve got young quarterbacks, so whoever’s hot gets the ball.  Stewart was hot today.”

As you’re counting down the days till September, when Poly will face Bonny, and Jordan will face Oaks Christian, enjoy these pics—we were hoping Lakewood would make it out of the San Clemente bracket and over to Dana Hills so we could get some shots of them too, but hey—the Summer is young!