Lakewood football coach Scott Meyer has a pretty rare view of the multi-faceted affects of the COVID-19 pandemic in the city, as an LBUSD parent, teacher, and coach. He’s had to add another title to his resume for the upcoming football season: travel agent. The Lancers’ field is scheduled to go under construction for upgrades to turf and an all-weather track in January, right as the modified 2020-21 season will be starting.
“We’ll be road warriors, it’s going to be an interesting season, that’s for sure,” said Meyer. “I’ll play anywhere at this point.”
The Lancers will have home games at Wilson and Millikan’s fields this year while theirs is under construction.
Their schedule is almost identical to the one Meyer had assembled for the Fall, although they had to drop St. Anthony, who they’ll scrimmage with instead. The Lancers have nonleague games against Mayfair, Villa Park, North Torrance, and St. Paul in addition to their Moore League schedule.
“They’re all solid programs for sure, but all games that should be competitive, then we get right into league with St. Paul,” said Meyer. “Hopefully we’ll have some momentum.”
Like all coaches, Meyer has spent a lot of this layoff thinking about the place of high school sports in our community, and has come away with a renewed appreciation for his job.
“Every year you want to set goals for championships and those will still be our goals, but I want to make sure our guys and seniors and coaches really enjoy these Friday nights togther,” he said. “Hopefully we’ll see a renewed sense of sportsmanship and value.”
As far as the Moore League, Meyer says he sees Poly as the favorites again and Wilson as the top challenger.
“Poly will forever be the team you have to beat until someone proves otherwise, and Ziggy has done a great job over at Wilson,” said Meyer. “Then probably the rest of us after that battling it out.”
The Lancers will be without a key weapon in that battle. Quarterback Gevani McCoy was a standout for Lakewood but transferred out of the program after last season. This year, Lakewood has a battle going between two juniors who’ve been in the program to take that spot over.
That battle has been made somewhat difficult by the fact that the team hasn’t been allowed to use footballs for most of the last six months.
“We haven’t seen them throw a whole lot or any of that, but they can sound off the cadence pretty well,” said Meyer.
Lakewood Football 2020-21 Schedule
1/8 vs. Mayfair (@ Wilson)
1/15 @ Villa Park
1/22 @ North Torrance
1/29 vs. Cabrillo (@ Millikan)
2/5 @ Jordan
2/12 @ Millikan
2/19 vs. St. Paul (@ Millikan)
2/26 vs. Wilson (@ Millikan)
3/5 @ Compton
3/12 vs. Poly (@ Wilson)
