Colin Creason’s journey to become the starting quarterback at Los Alamitos High in his senior year has been anything but smooth.
He went to Mater Dei as a freshman. He went to Los Alamitos as a sophomore. He briefly went to Long Beach Poly for two days at the start of his junior year before returning to Los Alamitos, which forced him to sit out all last season.
In his first varsity start on Aug. 15, he guided the Griffins to a 20-12 win over Inglewood. The team has won eight consecutive games under Creason, who has become more comfortable and confident with each game. He has passed for 1,292 yards and 11 touchdowns and rushed for 239 yards and eight touchdowns.
He grew up knowing and playing with most of his Los Alamitos teammates in youth ball. Somehow, someway, he got through all his starts and stops and concluded, “Of course, the grass isn’t always greener.”
His ability to run and pass and stay cool under pressure has been important for the offense, and he’s adopted the attitude of his teammates.
“We’re not scared of anybody,” he said. “This team is so close.”
Santee running back Darnell Miller of Santee has set a City Section record with 502 yards rushing against Jefferson. He had 33 carries and five TDs. The state record is still held by Ronnie Jenkins at 619 yards.
His father, Brandon, was an All-CIF basketball player at Oak Park in 1994. Colin played basketball, baseball and flag football since he was 8 with many of his teammates.
That’s the best way to describe identical twins Liam and Luke Meeker, football players at Mira Costa High.
Liam is the quarterback and Luke the receiver. They’ve been teaming up their whole life.
“Twin telepathy,” they joke.
Their father, George, who was a member of Edison’s surf team during his high school days, taught them to surf when they were 9. Luke claims to be the best, but it’s football where they are making their presence felt.
Both are 6 feet 2 and 200 pounds. Liam can throw and run. Luke can be physical and protective of his brother. They’re loyal and best friends.
“He’s a great quarterback,” Luke said.
“I know where he is on the field,” Liam said.
With Mira Costa returning eight starters on defense and key skill position players such as the Meekers and standout running back AJ McBean, the Mustangs have a chance to be competitive in a tough Bay League that also has Palos Verdes, Inglewood, Leuzinger, Culver City and Lawndale.
Coach Don Morrow, in his 33rd season, likes the togetherness of his players. There’s good leaders, like linebacker/long snapper Jackson Reach, who’s been a standout since his sophomore season.
On Wednesday afternoon, it was a pleasant 77 degrees, with drums, flutes and cymbals being heard around the Manhattan Beach campus as band members practiced. Cheerleaders also worked on their routines. Then football players took the field to continue preparation for an Aug. 29 opener against St. Francis.
Afterward, anyone could take a walk to the beach and surf. The Meekers have been spending summers in Australia, where their mother was born and raised on a farm. They’ve gotten stronger with all the chores they do each summer.
When it comes to surfing, they know the lingo and the fun.
Chargers linebacker Denzel Perryman was arrested Friday night on suspicion of a felony weapons charge, according to L.A. County Sheriff Dept. records.
Perryman was arrested by deputies from the South Los Angeles Sheriff’s Station at 9:41 p.m. and booked at shortly after 10 p.m., according to department records. A court hearing in Inglewood has been scheduled for Tuesday.
“We are aware of a matter involving Denzel and are gathering information,” the team said in a statement Saturday.
One of the veterans of the Chargers’ defense, Perryman, 32, had 55 tackles and one sack last season. He returned to the Chargers in 2024 — the team that drafted him in 2015 — after stints with the Las Vegas Raiders and Houston Texans.
Perryman is in training camp looking to keep his starting role next to Daiyan Henley.
Twelve years after a breakup that didn’t stick — and one year shy of the 20th anniversary of its biggest album — My Chemical Romance is on the road this summer playing 2006’s “The Black Parade” from beginning to end.
The tour, which stopped Saturday night at Dodger Stadium for the first of two concerts, doesn’t finally manifest the long-anticipated reunion of one of emo’s most influential bands; My Chem reconvened in 2019 and has been performing, pandemic-related delays aside, fairly consistently since then (including five nights at Inglewood’s Kia Forum in 2022 and two headlining appearances at Las Vegas’ When We Were Young festival).
Yet only now is the group visiting sold-out baseball parks — and without even the loss leader of new music to help drum up interest in its show.
“Thank you for being here tonight,” Gerard Way, My Chem’s 48-year-old frontman, told the crowd of tens of thousands at Saturday’s gig. “This is our first stadium tour, which is a wild thing to say.” To mark the occasion, he pointed out, his younger brother Mikey was playing a bass guitar inscribed with the Dodgers’ logo.
So how did this darkly witty, highly theatrical punk band reach a new peak so deep into its comeback? Certainly it’s benefiting from an overall resurgence of rock after years dominated by pop and hip-hop; My Chem’s Dodger Stadium run coincides this weekend with the return of the once-annual Warped Tour in Long Beach after a six-year dormancy.
Then again, Linkin Park — to name another rock group huge in the early 2000s — recently moved a planned Dodger Stadium date to Inglewood’s much smaller Intuit Dome, presumably as a result of lower-than-expected ticket sales.
The endurance of My Chemical Romance, which formed in New Jersey before eventually relocating to Los Angeles, feels rooted more specifically in its obsession with comic books and in Gerard Way’s frank lyrics about depression and his flexible portrayal of gender and sexuality. (“GERARD WAY TRANSED MY GENDER,” read a homemade-looking T-shirt worn Saturday by one fan.) Looking back now, it’s clear the band’s blend of drama and emotion — of world-building and bloodletting — set a crucial template for a generation or two of subsequent acts, from bands like Twenty One Pilots to rappers like the late Juice Wrld to a gloomy pop singer like Sombr, whose viral hit “Back to Friends” luxuriates in a kind of glamorous misery.
Gerard Way, from left, Mikey Way and Ray Toro perform as My Chemical Romance.
(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)
For much of its audience, My Chem’s proudly sentimental music contains the stuff of identity — one reason thousands showed up to Dodger Stadium wearing elaborate outfits inspired by the band’s detailed iconography.
In 2006, the quadruple-platinum “Black Parade” LP arrived as a concept album about a dying cancer patient; Way and his bandmates dressed in military garb that made them look like members of Satan’s marching band. Nearly two decades later, the wardrobe remained the same as the band muscled through the album’s 14 tracks, though the narrative had transformed into a semi-coherent Trump-era satire of political authoritarianism: My Chemical Romance, in this telling a band from the fictional nation of Draag, was performing for the delectation of the country’s vain and ruthless dictator, who sat stony-faced on a throne near the pitcher’s mound flanked by a pair of soldiers.
The theater of it all was fun — important (if a bit crude), you could even say, given how young much of the band’s audience is and how carefully so many modern pop stars avoid taking political stands that could threaten to alienate some number of their fans. After “Welcome to the Black Parade,” a bearded guy playing a government apparatchik handed out Dodger Dogs to the band and to the dictator; Way waited to find out whether the dictator approved of the hot dog before he decided he liked it too.
Fans react as My Chemical Romance performs.
(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)
Yet what really mattered was how great the songs still are: the deranged rockabilly stomp of “Teenagers,” the Eastern European oom-pah of “Mama,” the eruption of “Welcome to the Black Parade” from fist-pumping glam-rock processional to breakneck thrash-punk tantrum.
Indeed, the better part of Saturday’s show came after the complete “Black Parade” performance when My Chem — the Way brothers along with guitarists Frank Iero and Ray Toro, drummer Jarrod Alexander and keyboardist Jamie Muhoberac — reappeared sans costumes on a smaller secondary stage to “play some jams,” as Gerard Way put it, from elsewhere in the band’s catalog. (Its most recent studio album came out in 2010, though it’s since issued a smattering of archived material.)
Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance performs.
(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)
“I’m Not Okay (I Promise)” was blistering atomic pop, while “Summertime” thrummed with nervy energy; “Na Na Na (Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na)” was as delightfully snotty as its title suggests. The band reached back for what Way called his favorite My Chem song — “Vampires Will Never Hurt You,” from the group’s 2002 debut — and performed, evidently for the first time, a chugging power ballad called “War Beneath the Rain,” which Way recalled cutting in a North Hollywood studio “before the band broke up” as My Chem tried to make a record that never came out.
The group closed, as it often does, with its old hit “Helena,” a bleak yet turbo-charged meditation on what the living owe the dead, and as he belted the chorus, Way dropped to his knees in an apparent mix of exhaustion, despair, gratitude — maybe a bit of befuddlement too. He was leaving no feeling unfelt.
When it comes to special teams, Mira Costa’s football team has a dream group ready to handle punting, kicking, long snapping and holding.
The senior trio of punter Jackson Shevin, kicker Nico Talbott and long snapper Jackson Reach is an impressive group.
Shevin, who’s also the holder on PATs and field goals, averaged 38 yards on punts last season. Talbott waited his time to handle kicking duties on junior varsity and being the backup. He has performed well at the Chris Sailer kicking camps. Reach is an elite long snapper and terrific linebacker.
Shevin also says he’s ready to pass or run if coach Don Morrow calls for any fake punts or fake field goals.
“It’s pretty cool,” Morrow said of his special teams trio. Morrow is entering his 33rd season at Mira Costa and No. 37 overall and thinks special teams is pretty important for a football program.
With two of the three named Jackson and being from Manhattan Beach, you can imagine the trust and fun they have playing on the same team.
Mira Costa is one of a talented group of teams in the Bay League joining Palos Verdes, Inglewood, Leuzinger and Culver City, all of whom could be title contenders depending on what division they are placed in.
Mira Costa returns top quarterback Liam Meeker and top running back AJ McBean. But they know if they need a punt or a field goal, the “Three Amigos” are ready.
