It will be difficult this week to go anywhere in Long Beach without running into some high school athlete trying to win a Moore League title.
Titles are up for grabs this week in four sports starting today. Boys tennis individual singles and doubles competition get underway today at El Dorado Park, advancing all week to Friday’s title matches at the Billie Jean King Tennis Center.
Poly and Wilson shared the regular-season team title and likely will go baseline to baseline for titles this week.
Meanwhile, all the area golf courses will host at least one round of the Moore League boys golf tournament. Recreation Park Golf Course 18 hosts the first round today, Skylinks on Tuesday and El Dorado on Wednesday – 1 p.m. each day – as the event cuts down the field for Thursday’s title round back at Rec Park.
The league’s top track and field athletes will run the Moore League prelims Wednesday at Long Beach City College starting at 1 p.m., with the qualifiers advancing to the finals again at LBCC at 2:30 p.m. on Friday.
Poly’s girls, led by sprinter Ariana Washington, are the favorites. Wilson just missed a dual meet win over Poly and the Bruins, Jackrabbits and Rams all have quality entries, making for a tight team title race.
The swimmers take to the Belmont Plaza Temporary Pool all week as well for the league meet. The girls prelims are Tuesday and boys prelims Wednesday; the girls finals are Thursday and boys finals Friday (both 5 p.m.).
Baseball stretch run
Wilson improved its season record to 23-4 with a 3-1 win over Cypress, Josh Goldberg going six solid innings for the victory.
The Bruins are 9-0 in Moore League play and are bidding to be one of the few unbeaten league champs in league history. They have one league game this week, against 1-12 Compton, before closing against Poly and Millikan. The Rams are shadowing the Bruins at 7-1 in league play but face Jordan and Lakewood this week before meeting the Bruins in the season finale.
The interesting race is among Poly, Lakewood and Jordan for the third spot in the league and an automatic bid to the CIF playoffs.
In the San Gabriel Valley league, Downey and Paramount (both 5-1) have a two- game lead on preseason favorites Gahr and Warren (3-3). Downey and Paramount meet twice this week; if either sweeps, it’ll likely win the league title.
The Suburban league is an exciting, four-team race among Glenn (7-1), La Mirada (7-1), Bellflower (6-2) and Mayfair (6-2), and they butt heads this week, Glenn and Bellflower meeting twice and La Mirada squaring off against Mayfair.
Also this week, the Moore League softball title should be decided Thursday when Lakewood meets Millikan.
Lakewood hires Nolan
It took longer than expected, but Lakewood High finally hired Jimmy Nolan as its new football coach.
The veteran coach, who has coached successfully at Cantwell, Laguna Beach, Centennial and Carson, was named the Lancers’ new coach, replacing Kenric Jameison, who took the Lancers to the CIF playoffs in his only season as coach.
Nolan was offered the head coaching job before Jameison but chose to take some time off for family reasons.
Contact the writer: bkeisser@lbregister.com
