Beckman and Irvine battle for Fence Post Trophy

Beckman's football team will be out to win the Dennis Toohey Fence Post Trophy for the first time in school history when it meets Irvine Friday at 7 p.m. at Tustin in a key Pacific Coast League game.

Irvine (4-4, 2-1) will be out to win the Fence Post for the first time since 2009 but will have to upset co-PCL leader Beckman (6-2, 3-0) to do it.

The Vaqueros, coming off a dramatic 29-28 victory over Northwood last week, will also be out to solidify their playoff chances.

Northwood won last year's Fence Post Trophy, a competition among the five Irvine schools in the Pacific Coast League. Corona del Mar is the only school in the PCL not involved in the Fence Post race.

Beckman, which shares the PCL lead with Corona del Mar, comes into the game with a 3-0 record against Irvine teams with wins against Woodbridge, Northwood and University.

Beckman is located in the city of Irvine and part of the Tustin Unified School District.

Irvine has a 2-0 record with wins over city rivals University and Northwood.

With a victory over Irvine, Beckman would be 4-0 against city rivals with a game against Corona del Mar next week.

If Irvine wins, the Vaqueros would be 3-0 against city rivals and Beckman would be 3-1. Irvine would have the edge over Beckman if it wound up losing to Woodbridge in the final week, based on a head-to-head matchup with the Patriots.

In that scenario, Woodbridge could finish 2-2 against city rivals but Irvine would still finish with a better record at 3-1.

Going into the week, University is 1-2, Woodbridge 0-2 and Northwood 0-2 against city rivals.

The Fence Post trophy will be presented after Friday's Irvine-Beckman game.

The trophy, which reflects Irvine's ranch heritage, was first handed out in 1978. University won the first Fence Post.

It was later renamed in honor of Dennis Toohey, a popular youth football coach in Irvine who died at the age of 56 on Nov. 2, 1990.

For a slide show of some of the past winners, please click on the photo.

Also, if you know of other trophies that are given out throughout the county for cities, please drop me an email at tburt@ocregister.com.