When we started our student internship program at the562.org, we noticed an immediate trend in the applicants we were receiving from Long Beach Unified School District students. Most of the kids who applied for the paid internship program were athletes, and most of them were…well, they weren’t star athletes. They were athletes like JJ, Tyler […]
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COLUMN: Keith Hansen’s Services A Reminder to Serve
Everybody was there. I was there with my family–meaning my wife and kids but also JJ and Tyler–and it seemed like just about the rest of the Long Beach sports world was there too, packed into the Wilson High auditorium on a chilly Saturday morning. We weren’t there for a recital or an assembly or […]
COLUMN: New Football Playoff System Is Gold For Moore League
When CIF Southern Section commissioner Rob Wigod was an assistant football coach at Lakewood High, the playoff format bothered him. He felt like the Lancers were a good football team with good athletes and strong coaching–but because they were in the Moore League with Long Beach Poly, Lakewood was staked to the Division 1 playoffs, […]
COLUMN: Big History at Stake For Lakewood Football This Week
The562’s coverage of Lakewood Athletics is sponsored by J.P. Crawford, Class of 2013. Pride runs deep in Lakewood, where the city and its namesake high school have an incredible athletic history. Nationally elite in baseball for much of the last seven decades since the school was founded, Lakewood High has plenty of great history on the […]
COLUMN: Should Long Beach Poly Football Be in the Moore League?
The562’s coverage of Long Beach Poly athletics in the 2022-23 school year is sponsored by JuJu Smith-Schuster and the JuJu Foundation. The562’s coverage of Long Beach Poly athletics in the 2022-23 school year is sponsored by Poly alum Jayon Brown and PlayFair Sports Management. The Long Beach Poly football team is ranked No. 22 in the nation […]
COLUMN: The Hard Part of Rooting For a Mid-Major Like Long Beach State
Long Beach State fans, it happened again. Things were going great–the Beach won the Big West Commissioner’s Cup last year for being the best athletics program in the conference. The men’s volleyball team recently won back-to-back national championships, and the university invested in volleyball heavily, making national waves with the hire of alum Tyler Hildebrand […]
COLUMN: Build the Ramona Park Pool
Our city has a chance to do something that would improve lives and make things better for people in North Long Beach. A year ago, councilman Rex Richardson pointed out (correctly) that his Northside constituents had less access to public pools than people in other parts of the city. The Westside has a public pool […]
COLUMN: Long Beach Rolled Deep in NBA’s Summer League
Mike Guardabascio “You can take the Summer League out of Long Beach, but you can’t take Long Beach out of the Summer League.” That was the thought I had as I was driving my family home from Las Vegas last weekend, after 72 hours of nonstop basketball action at the NBA’s Summer League, hosted at […]
COLUMN: Title IX’s Legacy Felt in Long Beach
Mike Guardabascio A few weeks ago we celebrated a milestone moment in American sports history, the 50-year anniversary of the passage of Title IX. A federal civil rights law that has influenced so much around gender equality in education, arguably Title IX’s biggest impact was leveling the playing field for girls and women in sports. […]
COLUMN: Big West Baseball Needs a Conference Tournament
The562’s coverage of Dirtbags Baseball for the 2022 season is sponsored by P2S, Inc. Visit p2sinc.com to learn more. When Long Beach State played Hawaii for the men’s volleyball national championship last month, it was a banner day for the Big West Conference. Those two teams have won every national title since 2017, solidifying the […]