Football: Garfield keeps challenging its players

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There’s two ways to build a football program. You can hire a bunch of youth coaches as assistants, hoping they’ll convince players to show up at the high school, along with trying to recruit parents to get their sons to show up.

Or you can build the program the old-fashion way, with hard work and challenging the players to get better. That’s what Los Angeles Garfield is trying to do under Lorenzo Hernandez.

Hernandez continues to put together nonleague games that force his players to raise their game to be competitive. They haven’t necessarily been winning the games, but they play hard and it helps prepare them for City Section competition.

In 2011, the Bulldogs will open with a week zero game against La Puente Bishop Amat, followed by games against Huntington Beach Edison, Dorsey and Santa Fe Springs St. Paul.

Good for the Bulldogs. No one will say they are ducking competition.

-- Eric Sondheimer