Prep Football

Four local prep football teams launch their 2003 schedules this weekend, with Ocean View kicking off the new season tonight against Santiago. Edison, Huntington Beach and Marina each play Friday. A look at this week's season-opening matchups: TONIGHT Ocean View vs. Santiago (at Garden Grove High, 7 p.m.) Ocean View launches its season against a Santiago squad that's new to the Seahawks' nonleague schedule. Santiago went 4-6 overall in 2002 and finished fifth in the Garden Grove League.

Eric Johnson all by bypassed his lunch hour on team photo day Thursday to make sure that uniform pants and jersey numbers were correctly assigned to his players. As Johnson quickened his pace from room to room, he shouted instructions to his players that following an hour break for lunch, that they were to assemble on the Fountain Valley High football practice fields for a photo session that would take a little more than one hour to complete. As mundane as the photo setting would be on a hot and muggy afternoon, it is a mundane - albeit, necessary one - for any high school football coach.

The Huntington Beach High football team got a boost from its linemen prior to the start of the 2012 season by winning the 23rd annual Fountain Valley Lineman Competition on July 18 at Fountain Valley High. Host Fountain Valley finished in fifth place. Teams competed in six events - bench press, power clean, truck push, hurdle relay, Ironman relay and tug-of-war - and Huntington finished first or second in each competition, Oilers Coach Eric Lo said. The Oilers took first in both relay competitions and the truck push.

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The 2003 prep football season officially begins in two weeks and four local high schools have announced their schedules for the fall campaign. Ocean View gets a jump start on the local scene with a Sept. 11 game at Santiago. The Seahawks will play their first season under the lights at home, with a Sept. 19 nonleague game against Tesoro beginning a five-game home schedule. Edison, Huntington Beach and Marina each kickoff their respective seasons on Friday, Sept.

Some of the top teams from three counties will converge on the football fields at Edison High School on Saturday to take part in a passing league competition called Battle at the Beach. Sixteen prep football teams will compete in the fourth annual event that will run the entire day, beginning at 9 a.m. "We have some great teams coming to our school, and there will be some excellent competition," Edison Coach Dave White said. "We have some of the county's top teams, as well as some top schools from San Diego and Los Angeles counties, in this tournament."

Several of the CIF Southern Section?s top prep football teams, including programs that won Southern Section titles in 2007, will gather Saturday at Edison High to take part in the Battle of the Beach Passing Tournament, hosted by the Chargers football program. The all-day event begins with pool play at 9 a.m. and continues with games at 10 and 11. Play will continue in the afternoon, leading up to the championship game at 3 p.m. Joining host Edison in the event is Mater Dei, Los Alamitos, Santa Margarita, La Habra, Trabuco Hills, Foothill, Tesoro, Orange Lutheran, JSerra, Carlsbad, Centennial of Corona, South Hills, Valencia of Valencia, Chaparral and Murietta Valley.

Early fall of the year 2000 has been one of the most successful on the local prep football scene in recent memory. So far, that is. Still, there's plenty of football to be played, and, as the adage goes, it's better where you end up, rather than where you began. Four local teams have found their way into various divisional rankings at one time, or another: Edison, Marina, Fountain Valley (which was ranked through September, but since has fallen from the rankings)

Mike Sciacca, Independent It's already four games into the 2000 prep football season, yet Patrick Campbell is just starting to come into his own. An all-Golden West League receiver as a sophomore last year, Campbell was moved to quarterback this year to replaced the graduated Deshai Houston, the Seahawks' all-league record-setting quarterback. He has made the transition quite well and the junior, who also is playing free safety for the first time at the varsity level, says he's becoming comfortable in his new role.