Here are some of the most dominant teams and programs from the last decade, a list so prestigious that several championship programs have been left off it — including Long Beach Poly’s football program (which has sent more players to the NFL than any other high school in the country), and which LB Magazine has recently featured. Also worthy of note are Wilson’s 2008 National Champion girls’ soccer team, as well as the school’s aquatics programs, which dominated CIF through the mid-2000s (and which have sent more water-sport athletes to the Olympics than any other high school in the nation). Photos courtesy of Wilson High Baseball

Historically, the top area program for high school baseball is the Lakewood Lancers, who’ve sent a dozen players to the Majors, and who’ve won the Moore League title with great consistency. But for the 2006-2007 and 2007-2008 seasons, the Wilson Bruins stood alone, with back-to-back CIF title game appearances at Dodger Stadium. In 2007, they won the CIF Championship, and, on the strength of their astounding 32-3 record, were crowned National Champions as well. The following year they made it back to the title game, but fell just short. A few months later, the Bruins’ leader, Aaron Hicks, was taken 14th overall in the MLB Draft by the Minnesota Twins, going from high school to professional baseball in a matter of moments. When he works his way up to the big show, he will be the 12th Bruin to have done so. Wilson is trying to change history, and with back-to-back title appearances, a National Championship banner, and a 60-9-1 record from 2006-2008, it looks like they just might.



Photos courtesy of CSULB Athletics

In 1998, the CSULB 49ers women’s volleyball team won a dramatic five-set victory over Penn State, in an NCAA National Championship game held in Madison, Wisconsin. The win — Long Beach State’s last national title — capped a historic season, as the 49ers became the first women’s volleyball team in NCAA history to go undefeated through a whole season, finishing at 36-0. The legacy of that championship team lives on in its star player (and the 1998 tournament’s Most Outstanding Player) Misty May.

May, the most famous athletic alumnus of CSULB, has gone on to international fame as part of the greatest beach volleyball duo of all time. She won her sport’s first-ever backto- back gold medals in 2004 and 2008 along with partner Kerri Walsh, and May/Walsh went over 100 matches without a loss on the AVP tour, an unprecedented feat not likely to be repeated. The head coach of the ‘98 team, Brian Gimmillaro, who also won national titles with the 49ers in 1989 and 1993, is still with CSULB, so it’s entirely possible that the university’s next National Championship will be from the same sport their last one came in.



In 2003, the Vikings’ men’s volleyball team, which hadn’t won the State Championship since 1985, went 2-14. The next season, Randy Totorp took over as head coach, and the transformation couldn’t have been more immediate. In 2004, the Vikings went from that awful 2-14 record, all the way to winning a State Championship, and became determined to make it a habit: they’ve now won the state title three of Totorp’s six years with the program, most recently in the Spring of 2009. In those six years, they’ve won the conference title five times, and only failed to make the state Final Four once.

The Vikings showed their traditional Long Beach grit in this year’s state final, losing the first set before digging deep and sweeping the next three to grab their dominant victory. Totorp says he has no plans of leaving, so expect this team’s pre-season goal to remain “State” for years to come.



Setting a record for most consecutive Division One girls’ basketball state titles would be impressive enough somewhere in the middle of the country, where the competition is relatively soft — to do it in California, the nation’s most competitive region for girls’ hoops, would seem nearly impossible. But that’s what the Long Beach Poly Jackrabbits did when they won their fourth consecutive State Championship in Sacramento, in March of this year.

You’d be hard-pressed to find any high school team — in any sport — anywhere in the country that has been more dominant over the last four years, as the ‘Rabbits compiled a 127-14 record against the country’s best competition (and eight of those losses were in the first year of that run). Incredibly, they have yet to receive National Champion status, having fallen just short by being ranked second in the country in 2008 and 2007. Who knows — we could see the ‘Rabbits crowned National Champs this season. The 2008-2009 team that won the record fourth consecutive title and went 32-3 on the season only graduated two players, and only one starter.



Photos courtesy of Ken Jakemer

The Long Beach area has long been known as a hotspot for baseball — from the days that oil workers would walk over from Signal Hill to play ball on the dirt lot that preceded Blair Field, to the dominance of local high school teams, to a Long Beach State Dirtbags program that made four College World Series appearances from 1989-1998. All of that success stems from the quality of youth baseball programs that can be found in the city’s abundant park space.

In addition to high-caliber Little League and softball programs, Long Beach has become known internationally for the quality of its PONY baseball teams (for players aged 13 and 14 years old).

In the Summer of 2008, Long Beach PONY, based out of Whaley Park, brought home a rare treat to the city, bolstering a strong crop of recent State and National Championships with the highest of accomplishments: a World Championship trophy. After battling through a tough field of opponents in the World Series (held annually in Pennsylvania), LB PONY defeated the Taiwanese national team in the most dramatic fashion possible, when pinch-hitter Oliver Van Buskirk came off the bench in the bottom of the ninth to smack a two-run walk-off homerun over center field that gave the LB team, and their home town, a World Championship. The area has excelled in the PONY ranks recently — the year before the world title, the Whaley PONY team was “only” the second best team in the world, losing in the World Series finale. And the year before that, in 2006, another team from Long Beach, Heartwell PONY, brought home a World Championship as well. But amazing performances from the area’s youth is nothing new: Whaley PONY won the World Championship in 1959, too.