Football: City Section Division II openers produce upsets
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You can call it parity or bad seedings, but the City Section Division II playoff openers produced a series of upsets.
Gone are the No. 1 seed, Reseda, plus No. 3 South East, No. 5 Jefferson and No. 8 Lincoln.
One easy pick was that Panorama didn’t belong as a No. 14 seed. Coach Devon Rose sat quietly at the seeding meeting as his team dropped and dropped and dropped. So Panorama drew South East and won in overtime, 49-46.
That sets up a Friday quarterfinal matchup between two former North Hollywood coaches, Rose and Jason Camp of Chatsworth. Go Huskies.
The big news Friday was the rise of the Western League. Venice, Fairfax, Hamilton and Palisades all won openers, with Venice in Division I. Palisades, running the wishbone attack, might be the most improved City team in a year’s time.
The Division I quarterfinal matchups should be outstanding. Dorsey-Taft is a rematch won by Dorsey earlier in the year. The Venice-San Pedro game should be competitive. Carson shouldn’t have problems with Garfield, though the Bulldogs have been known to pull off an upset on occasion. And Crenshaw-Narbonne ought to be interesting for a while.
-- Eric Sondheimer