los angeles times

When the Dodgers acquired left-hander Tarik Skubal at the trade deadline, they expected him to be a big part of their postseason plans. But they didn’t necessarily pencil him in as their Game 1 starter.

After mulling over their options this week, the Dodgers are expected to announce Friday that Skubal will take the mound in Game 1 of the National League Division Series, confirmed a person with knowledge of the situation who was not authorized to speak publicly.

Their plans for a sweltering 1 p.m. start Saturday against the Braves were first reported by the Athletic.

The rest of the Dodgers’ rotation order was not immediately clear, but right-hander Yoshinobu Yamamoto — who had seemed a strong option for Game 1 after his World Series heroics last year — pitched to batters during the Dodgers’ workout Wednesday. If he takes his usual five days of rest, that would line him up to pitch Game 3 in Atlanta on Tuesday. So, left-hander Blake Snell could pitch Game 2 Sunday at Dodger Stadium.

“To be honest, we can kind of really put all four guys in a hat and run them out there,” manager Dave Roberts said Tuesday. “But I think there is going to be more thought behind it.”

Skubal, who the Dodgers acquired from the Tigers for three prospects, has posted a 2.61 ERA in 10 starts for Los Angeles. He finished his regular season with a gem against the Giants last week: seven three-hit innings on just 75 pitches.

How the Dodgers get ready for the Braves

From Maddie Lee: The deciding game between the Philadelphia Phillies and Atlanta Braves played silently on the Dodger Stadium scoreboard Thursday as Dodgers players practiced below.

The Dodgers were less than 48 hours away from the first pitch of the National League Division Series. The “2026 Postseason” decals had been freshly painted up the baselines that afternoon. All that was left to be decided was their opponent — the winner of the game serving as the backdrop of their intrasquad scrimmage.

About a half an hour after the Dodgers cleared the field, the Braves advanced to the NLDS with a 6-2 win over the Phillies. The Dodgers and Braves will open the best-of-five series at Dodger Stadium on Saturday at 1 p.m. PDT.

The Atlanta Braves finished off the Philadelphia Phillies in the wild-card round in three games and move on to face the Dodgers in the NLDS.

“We are the team to beat,” veteran utility player Kiké Hernández said. “We are the team that you have to go through. And that’s all nice words and everything, but we got to take care of business on the field. But I feel great about my team.”

The Dodgers are the reigning back-to-back champions and are aiming to become the first National League team to win three World Series in a row.

“Obviously it’s there, but it’s not something we’re really focused on,” veteran third baseman Max Muncy said of the three-peat chase. “We’re trying to focus on ourselves getting ready this week, paying attention to whoever we might be playing and just trying to get ready for a postseason series the same way we’ve always gotten ready for it.”

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Nine concerns the Dodgers should have about facing the Braves in the NLDS

Shaikin: ‘Hired gun’ Tarik Skubal opens up on the pressure, pain and lessons of October

Lakers hire new PA announcer

From Thuc Nhi Nguyen: Derrin Horton’s first job was in public address announcing. His first passion was the Lakers. The longtime sports broadcaster’s new job is the marriage of both.

Horton will take over the mic as the Lakers’ home public-address announcer, the team announced Thursday, stepping into the role for legendary Lakers announcer Lawrence Tanter, who died last week.

“There’s no way you can fill his shoes,” Horton said in an interview with local reporters. “And so you just come here with a passion and a goal to be informative and entertaining and be a part of Showtime.”

Tanter, who provided the smooth, baritone soundtrack for Lakers home games for 43 seasons, suffered a stroke on March 17 and missed the final six regular-season home games and the playoffs last season. Tanter announced his retirement in June, transitioning to a game-day advisory role with the team. Horton, a former KTLA broadcaster who has worked as an anchor, reporter, host, play-by-play announcer and voice actor, reached out to the team about the opportunity.

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How UCLA build a formidable rushing attack

From Connor Dullinger: How you do one thing is how you do everything.

UCLA running backs coach A.J. Steward preaches it and it is the mantra adopted by the Bruins’ prolific running backs.

UCLA’s three-headed backfield, composed of fifth-year players Wayne Knight and Anthony Woods and senior Jaivian Thomas, is hailed for its undeniable impact on the ground, ranking first nationally in rushing touchdowns, third in yards per carry and fifth in yards per game this season.

Steward, who works in tandem with offensive line coach and run game coordinator Chris Smith, said it’s what his tailbacks do without the ball and the group’s commitment to each other that separates the group from the rest of the pack.

“The way we play without the ball in our hands is no different. It should be no different than what we do when we have the ball in our hands in terms of trying to make a play for our offense,” Steward said. “You cut the film on any of these guys, you’ll see they’re downfield making blocks. They’re there at the end of the play in case somebody puts the ball down [on] the ground and that’s because they hear it every day how you do anything’s how you do everything.”

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Ducks sign defenseman to big deal

The Ducks have signed promising young defenseman Tristan Luneau to a six-year contract extension worth $43.2 million after just 14 NHL appearances.

The Ducks announced the deal Thursday with the 22-year-old Luneau, whose promising career has been slowed by injury. Now healthy and ready for a full-time NHL role, he inked a long-term deal with the team that drafted him in the second round in 2022.

Luneau was the Quebec major junior league’s top defenseman in the 2022-23 season and he made the Ducks’ roster out of training camp the next fall. But Luneau came down with a viral infection that winter while practicing with Canada’s national junior team, forcing him to miss the rest of the year.

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MLB postseason schedule

Wild-card series
National League
No. 3 Atlanta vs. No. 6 Philadelphia
at Atlanta 5, Philadelphia 3 (box score)
Philadelphia 4, at Atlanta 3 (10) (box score)
at Atlanta 6, Philadelphia 2 (box score)

Division series
National League

No. 2 Dodgers vs. No. 3 Atlanta
Saturday at Dodgers, 1 p.m., FOX/FOX Deportes/FOX One
Sunday at Dodgers, 5 p.m., FS1/FOX Deportes/FOX One
Tuesday at Atlanta, 3 p.m., FOX/FS1/FOX Deportes/FOX One
*Wednesday at Atlanta, 3 p.m., FOX/FS1/FOX Deportes/FOX One
*Friday at Dodgers, 5 p.m., FOX/FS1/FOX Deportes/FOX One

No. 1 Milwaukee vs. No. 4 San Diego
Saturday at Milwaukee, 5:30 p.m, FS1/FOX Deportes/FOX One
Sunday at Milwaukee, 1 p.m. FS1/FOX Deportes/FOX One
Tuesday at San Diego, 6:30 p.m., FOX/FS1/FOX Deportes/FOX One
*Wednesday at San Diego, 7 p.m., FOX/FS1/FOX Deportes/FOX One
*Friday at Milwaukee, 1:30 p.m., FOX/FS1/FOX Deportes/FOX One

American League

No. 1 Tampa Bay vs. No. 4 New York
Saturday at Tampa Bay, 3:30 p.m., TBS/truTV/UniMas/HBO Max
Monday at Tampa Bay, 5 p.m., TBS/truTV/UniMas/HBO Max
Wednesday at New York, 5 p.m., TBS/truTV/UniMas/HBO Max
*Thursday at New York, 5 p.m., TBS/truTV/UniMas/HBO Max
*Saturday, Oct. 10 at Tampa Bay, 5 p.m., TBS/truTV/UniMas/HBO Max

No. 2 Cleveland vs. No. 6 Chicago White Sox
Saturday at Cleveland, 10 a.m., TBS/truTV/UniMas/HBO Max
Monday at Cleveland, 2 p.m., TBS/truTV/UniMas/HBO Max
Wednesday at Chicago, 1 p.m., TBS/truTV/UniMas/HBO Max
*Thursday at Chicago, 2 p.m., TBS/truTV/UniMas/HBO Max
*Saturday, Oct. 10 at Cleveland, 2 p.m., TBS/truTV/UniMas/HBO Max

NLCS starts Sunday, Oct. 11
ALCS starts Monday, Oct. 12
World Series starts Friday, Oct. 23

This day in sports history

1906 — Canadian world heavyweight boxing champion Tommy Burns KOs American challenger ‘Fireman’ Jim Flynn in 15 rounds to retain his title in Los Angeles.

1950 — Jim Hardy throws six touchdown passes, including five to Bob Shaw, as the Chicago Cardinals pound the Baltimore Colts 55-13.

1970 — Fourteen members of the Wichita State football team are killed in a plane crash in the Rocky Mountains.

1980 — Larry Holmes registers a technical knockout in the 11th round against Muhammad Ali to win the world heavyweight title in Las Vegas.

1983 — The Green Bay Packers score 49 points in the first half, including 35 in the second quarter, in a 55-14 rout of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

1988 — Future world heavyweight boxing champion Lennox Lewis, representing Canada, wins super-heavyweight gold medal at the Seoul Olympics; beats American Riddick Bowe by 2nd round TKO.

1991 — Steffi Graf becomes the youngest woman to win 500 matches as a pro when she beats Petra Langrova of Czechoslovakia 6-0, 6-1 in the Leipzig International Tournament.

1993 — In the first all-British world heavyweight title fight, Lennox Lewis retains his WBC heavyweight title with a seven-round knockout of Frank Bruno in Cardiff, Wales.

1993 — California rallies from a 30-0 deficit to beat Oregon 42-41. Dave Barr throws three second-half touchdowns, including a 26-yarder to Iheanyi Uwaezuoke with 1:17 left in the game.

1994 — North Carolina’s 92-game winning streak in women’s soccer ends with a scoreless tie in overtime against Notre Dame.

1994 — Don Shula’s Miami Dolphins beat son Dave’s Cincinnati Bengals 23-7 in the first meeting between father and son coaches in pro sports.

2004 — Rice and San Jose State play in the highest-scoring regulation game in Division I-A history, with the Spartans winning 70-63. The 133 points surpass the total from Middle Tennessee’s 70-58 victory over Idaho on Oct. 6, 2001. The schools combine for 19 touchdowns to break the Division I-A record of 18.

2006 — Tennessee Titans defensive tackle Albert Haynesworth is given a five-game suspension — the longest for on-field behavior in NFL history — for stomping on Dallas Cowboys center Andre Gurode’s head and kicking him in the face.

2009 — Ninth-grader Alexis Thompson shoots a 3-under 69 for a share of the lead with top-ranked Lorena Ochoa and three others after the second round of the Navistar LPGA Classic.

2011 — Dallas has its largest lead blown in a loss in franchise history, frittering away a 24-point third-quarter cushion in a 34-30 loss to Detroit. The Lions turned a 20-point halftime deficit into an overtime win at Minnesota the previous week.

2016 — The United States win the Ryder Cup for the first time since 2008. Ryan Moore two-putts on No. 18 for a 1-up victory over Lee Westwood, giving the Americans a 15-10 lead that seals the win over Europe. The 17-11 victory over Europe is their biggest rout in 35 years at the Ryder Cup.

2016 — Atlanta’s Matt Ryan passes for 503 yards and four touchdowns, while wide receiver Julio Jones has 12 catches for 300 yards and a touchdown in Atlanta’s 48-33 win over Carolina.

Compiled by the Associated Press

This day in baseball history

1969 — Seattle Pilots’ last game in Seattle; crash to 98th season loss, 3-1 to Oakland in front of just 5,473; move to Milwaukee as the Brewers next season.

2001 — Sammy Sosa becomes the first player in major league history with three 60-homer seasons, but the Reds hold on for a 5-4 victory over the Chicago Cubs. Sosa’s solo shot comes in the first inning.

2004 — Jeff Kent becomes all-time home run leader for MLB second basemen when he hits two in Astros’ 9-3 win over the Rockies; 302 overall HR to break Ryne Sandberg’s major league record established in 1997.

2004 — Montreal Expos earn the last win in the franchise’s MLB history, beating New York Mets, 6-3 at Shea Stadium; Brad Wilkerson hits the Expos’ final home run in ninth inning, his 32nd of the year.

2016 — Vin Scully calls his final Dodgers game after a record 67 MLB Seasons.

Compiled by the Associated Press

Until next time…

That concludes today’s newsletter. If you have any feedback, ideas for improvement or things you’d like to see, email me at houston.mitchell@latimes.com. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.

There is no love like municipal infrastructure love.

It was late in the 20th century when my wife, Mary Frances, and I moved into Los Feliz. Quickly we learned that our corner of the neighborhood was known as Franklin Hills, and that just about every eastward outing would take us across a funny little bridge with eight pointy turrets. That bridge was the Shakespeare Bridge.

As a teacher at nearby Ivanhoe Elementary, Mary Frances crossed the bridge twice every school day for more than 20 years. As a student there, our daughter Grace crossed it for six years, usually with me as chauffeur.

We’ve crossed it at all hours in every kind of weather, on foot, on bikes and in cars, talking about school, work, family and, lately, the fractured state of the nation and world.

Now that bridge on Franklin Avenue at St. George Street is near its 100th anniversary and an Oct. 10 neighborhood celebration is in the works, complete with a street party and procession. As the day approaches, I keep thinking about how large a funny little bridge can become in the lives of its neighbors.

This view looks westward across L.A.’s Franklin Avenue Bridge, also known as the Shakespeare Bridge.

(Library of Congress)

Originally it was the Franklin Avenue Bridge, designed by J.C. Wright of the city’s civil engineering department in the mid-1920s, when a twenty-something cartoonist named Walt Disney was new to the neighborhood and the Vitagraph Studios, a block away, were transitioning from silent films to talkies.

Paid for by a controversial city assessment of neighbors, the bridge is 262 feet long and 30 feet wide — a pipsqueak compared with landmarks like Pasadena’s Colorado Street Bridge or the 6th Street Bridge between Boyle Heights and downtown L.A.’s Arts District. Its three open-spandrel arches were made using Portland cement.

Nobody knows where the Shakespeare nickname came from, but city officials designated the bridge as L.A.’s Historic-Cultural Monument No. 126 in 1974 and retrofitted it in the 1990s to better withstand earthquakes. Crucially, city staffers preserved those charming and entirely unnecessary turrets, which deserve their own sonnet, if you ask me.

“Back then, people put some thought into these things,” City Council aide Tom LaBonge told this newspaper in 1988, years before he became councilman (2001-15) for the district that includes the bridge.

Since 2017, neighbors have tended a Shakespeare Bridge Garden beneath the span. The neighbors (a.k.a. the Franklin Hills Residents Assn.) also pay to keep up the landscaping on the nearby traffic island.

When the bridge went up, L.A. “was becoming a city,” said Alison Wallace, president of the FHRA. “We were trying to look legit, and people were adding all of these amazing public works.”

The result, Wallace said, was a span that eased connections between neighborhoods and “helped us become a community.”

This view looks from below the Franklin Avenue Bridge, also known as the Shakespeare Bridge.

(Library of Congress)

Many architectural sources call its style Gothic Revival. Some see Moorish influence. Researcher Tiger Shankman has hailed its “perky, anachronistic beauty.” In “An Architectural Guidebook to Los Angeles,” authors David Gebhard and Robert Winter suggest that the ornate ends of the bridge “cry out for sculptured saints.”

Instead of saints, however, the bridge has seen a lot of actors and film crews. The bridge turns up in the movies “Dead Again” (1991) and “I Love You, Man” (2009), the Netflix series “Nobody Wants This” (in 2025) and the HBO series “I Love L.A.” (also 2025). My favorite clip is a chase sequence from a 1971 “Mannix” episode — excruciatingly slow-paced by 2026 standards, and shot long before the FHRA tore out the city’s blacktop median and planted greenery.

Given all of its neighborhood fame, it surprised me to hear how few Angelenos know about the bridge. When Charlie Ryan and Thom Vest started offering LA Explained walking tours early this year, they expected the Disney history would be a popular part of their Los Feliz itinerary, but the bridge quickly emerged as another central element.

Because most of those who sign up for the Los Feliz tour live elsewhere, they have never crossed the bridge “and don’t know it’s there,” Ryan said. “Out of all the tours that I do, it’s the one that brings the most surprise to people.”

An aerial view of the Shakespeare Bridge, formally known as the Franklin Avenue Bridge, in the Franklin Hills area of Los Feliz.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

But plenty of those who live nearby have deep connections with the bridge, including Charley and Shirley Mims, who got married there on Oct. 21, 2000.

To open the ceremony, Shirley strolled from the west end of the bridge to the east, where Charley was waiting. (They still live in the neighborhood and plan to be at the centennial party.)

“When you see the bridge and cross it,” my neighbor Dave McDonald said the other day, “you feel like you’re home. It’s like a welcoming beacon.”

“It’s a real local’s way of getting around,” said Matteo Chizzola, who moved to Los Angeles four years ago and settled in Los Feliz two years ago. Last year, when Chizzola decided to start selling matcha from a sort of grown-up street-corner lemonade stand, he chose a patch of sidewalk at Franklin Avenue and Talmadge Street, two blocks from the bridge.

A jogger crosses the Shakespeare Bridge.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

“It is beautiful and it’s weird. If you go at the right time of day, at sunset, it’s an incredible view,” he said.

Chizzola said he isn’t getting rich running the stand, Fridays through Sundays, but “it has become something that puts a huge smile on my face.”

He’ll be on hand for the bridge’s centennial parade, along with invited local luminaries including Victor the fruit guy (who worked a corner near Marshall High School for more than a decade) and Dora Herrera of the much-loved Yuca’s restaurant on Hillhurst Avenue.

A pedestrian crosses the Shakespeare Bridge,which was completed in 1926.

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

Sometimes, when Mary Frances and I are on a neighborhood walk, we stop mid-span. In the distance to the south, you see the downtown skyline. In the arroyo below the bridge (officially the Arroyo de Sacatela) you see the private homes and yards along Monon Street and Myra Avenue. You also see the Los Feliz campus of the International School of Los Angeles (1960), the only school designed by modernist architect John Lautner.

Then there are the decorations. Every few months, in a tradition started by departed neighbor Chris Boutelle, Mary Frances joins a team of FHRA board members and other volunteers who put up hearts for Valentine’s Day, shamrocks for St. Patrick’s Day, Pride and Juneteenth flags in June, American flags and bunting in the lead-up to July 4, and so on.

Most of these costume changes are seamless. But in June 2023, someone tore down the Pride flags. Neighbors quickly replaced them. They came down again. Neighbors replaced them again. The back-and-forth went on for weeks. A suspect was arrested, released, then re-arrested.

Shakespeare Bridge in Los Feliz was the site of controversy in June 2023, when someone repeatedly stole Pride flags from a bridge display. Neighbors replaced the flags and police made an arrest.

(Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

“It was almost every day for a month. People really came together,” said Wallace. The vandal surely didn’t mean to, but Wallace contends that he wound up uniting the neighborhood as never before.

The Oct. 10 bridge celebration, organized by the FHRA, will begin with a noon procession to the bridge from Marshall High School (another neighborhood Gothic Revival landmark), featuring a marching band, several vintage cars and a costumed dog parade.

At the end of that short walk, there’s a party planned from 1-5 p.m. at the end of Monon Street , right under the bridge. There will be snacks, drinks, live music, kid crafts, a bouncy house, a handful of actors in Shakespearean garb and scads of neighbors being neighborly.

I’ll be there for all of it. In times like these, every bridge needs celebrating.

Shakespeare Bridge, formally known as the Franklin Avenue Bridge, spans a ravine in the Franklin Hills with downtown Los Angeles in the background.

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

WEDNESDAY’S RESULTS

City Section

Arleta 20, North Hollywood 6

Birmingham 8, Cleveland 7

Eagle Rock 39, Verdugo Hills 0

Fremont 29, Hawkins 6

GALA 35, Hawkins 0

GALA 18, Fremont 0

Granada Hills Kennedy 32, El Camino Real 20

Locke 19, New Designs University Park 6

Manual Arts 6, Los Angeles 0

MSAR 37, Valor Academy 0

Narbonne 28, Los Angeles Wilson 26

North Hollywood 36, Arleta 21

Port of Los Angeles 14, Crenshaw 13

SOCES 40, AMIT 0

South Gate 19, Maywood Academy 0

Taft 19, Chatsworth 12

Venice 13, Los Angeles Marshall 6

View Park 7, USC Hybrid 6

Southern Section

Adelanto 30, Indian Springs 0

Alemany 32, Louisville 8

Alhambra 27, Arroyo 0

Aliso Niguel 6, Mission Viejo 0

Arrowhead Christian 7, Woodcrest Christian 0

Azusa 25, Nogales 0

Baldwin Park 36, Duarte 0

Beckman 46, San Clemente 39

Bishop Amat 6, St. Mary’s Academy 6

Bishop Montgomery 68, Sacred Heart of Jesus 0

Buena Park 13, Katella 0

California 24, Mayfair 0

California Military Institute 25, Rim of the World 0

Cerritos 28, Santa Fe 0

Cerritos Valley Christian 47, Capistrano Valley Christian 0

Chino 13, Ontario 0

Compton 39, Dominguez 6

Corona del Mar 28, Marina 12

Cypress 13, Esperanza 12

Don Lugo 24, Chaffey 18

Downey 34, La Serna 20

Eastvale Roosevelt 22, Corona 18

El Rancho 26, San Gabriel 8

Fillmore 42, Bishop Diego 8

Flintridge Sacred Heart 49, Immaculate Heart 22

Gabrielino 13, La Canada 7

Garden Grove 28, La Palma Kennedy 21

Gardena Serra 71, St. Anthony 0

Godinez 12, Costa Mesa 7

Hacienda Heights Wilson 12, Rowland 0

Heritage 19, Elsinore 0

Huntington Beach 27, Edison 26

Irvine University 27, Laguna Beach 7

La Habra 18, Santa Ana Foothill 8

Lakewood St. Joseph 33, Fountain Valley 6

La Puente 27, Bassett 13

Linfield Christian 37, Aquinas 6

Long Beach Cabrillo 20, Compton Early College 0

Long Beach Poly 26, Long Beach Wilson 7

Magnolia 12, Century 6

Millikan 33, Lakewood 0

Montebello 12, El Monte 6

Monrovia 33, South Pasadena 0

Newport Harbor 29, Los Alamitos 0

North Torrance 12, El Segundo 0

Northview 14, Charter Oak 6

Ontario Christian 32, Riverside Notre Dame 6

Palos Verdes 32, Mira Costa 7

Panorama 39, Brentwood 0

Paramount 12, La Mirada 6

Patriot 27, La Sierra 7

Pioneer 21, Whitney 0

Pomona 12, Workman 0

Quartz Hill 26, Lancaster 0

Ramona Convent 40, Mary Star of the Sea 6

Rancho Alamitos 26, Estancia 13

Riverside King 74, San Jacinto 0

Rosary 13, Irvine 6

Rosemead 6, Mountain View 0

Saddleback 6, Los Amigos 2

Sage Hill 39, Northwood 7

San Juan Hills 45, Dana Hills 0

San Marino 45, Temple City 12

Santa Ana Valley 26, Bolsa Grande 18

Schurr 30, Bell Gardens 0

Segerstrom 32, Placentia Valencia 14

Sierra Canyon 31, Chaminade 0

Sierra Vista 7, Garey 6

Sonora 18, El Dorado 13

South El Monte 28, Keppel 0

St. Margaret’s 32, Newport Beach Pacifica Christian 7

St. Paul 38, Cantwell-Sacred heart 0

Troy 27, Brea Olinda 21

Tustin 16, Ocean View 0

Villa Park 19, El Modena 7

Warren 47, Bellflower 7

West Covina 19, Covina 0

Westminster 12, Laguna Hills 6

Westminster La Quinta 18, Garden Grove Santiago 6

Westridge 26, Chadwick 6

Whittier 27, Glenn 6

Woodbridge 48, Portola 12

Yorba Linda 27, Anaheim Canyon 0

Yucaipa 27, Citrus Valley 6

Intersectional

Eagle Rock 14, Vasquez 6

Panorama 39, Brentwood 0

Vasquez 38, Verdugo Hills 0

THURSDAY’S RESULTS

City Section

Contreras 26, Bernstein 6

Contreras 14, Hollywood 7

Elizabeth 6, Maywood Academy 0

Foshay 59, West Adams 0

Garfield 27, Bell 24

Jefferson 51, Diego Rivera 0

Los Angeles Hamilton 55, WISH Academy 0

Los Angeles Roosevelt 24, Legacy 12

Mendez 25, Roybal 12

Narbonne 56, Gardena 6

Palisades 7, Fairfax 6

RFK Community 27, Mendez 0

RFK Community 20, Roybal 0

San Pedro 13, Carson 12

Santa Paula 52, Bishop Diego 0

Santee 15, Los Angeles 0

Sotomayor 14, Marquez 0

Torres 0, Maywood CES 0

Venice 26, LACES 0

Westchester 8, Los Angeles University 6

Wilmington Banning 14, King/Drew 7

Southern Section

Antelope Valley 12, Eastside 6

Brentwood 33, Burbank Providence 6

Buena 24, Del Sol 12

Castaic 13, Valencia 6

Compton 6, Compton Early College 0

Gahr 14, California 6

Hart 32, Golden Valley 6

Hueneme 40, Cate 19

Inglewood 34, Culver City 7

JSerra 33, Sierra Canyon 12

Mater Dei 39, Beaumont 19

Moorpark 19, Royal 13

Oaks Christian 28, Newbury Park 22

Oxnard 25, Dos Pueblos 24

Oxnard Pacifica 20, Channel Islands 8

Palmdale 6, Knight 0

Redondo Union 19, Torrance 12

Santa Monica 21, Lawndale 0

Santa Paula 52, Bishop Diego 0

SEED: LA 25, Windward 6

Sherman Oaks Notre Dame 20, Chaminade 19

Simi Valley 27, Oak Park 25

South Torrance 28, Peninsula 0

St. Bonaventure 28, Fillmore 24

St. Margaret’s 38, Dana Hills 6

Tesoro 32, Capistrano Valley 12

Vasquez 30, Westridge 7

Village Christian 26, Rio Hondo Prep 0

Warren 45, Cerritos Valley Christian 26

West Torrance 12, Wiseburn Da-Vinci 6

Westlake 20, Agoura 0

Woodbridge 47, Corona Centennial 0

Oct. 1, 2026 3 AM PT

California’s general election takes place on November 3. Here is information Times reporters gathered about the races:

L.A. mayor election

L.A. City Council elections

Other L.A. city elections

Community college elections

L.A. County elections

Judge elections

Governor’s race

California statewide propositions

Other statewide races

U.S. House elections

How to vote

Follow more election coverage

This summer, Southern California hiker Mark Orr spotted a hazard he struggled to stop thinking about: a crumbling, narrowing section of the Devil’s Backbone Trail near Mt. Baldy.

Orr wanted to help.

In early August, he trekked about 5.6 miles from the trailhead near Manker Flat campground to the site, hauling 85 pounds of gear with him over two trips. Orr first spent two hours digging out a wider route and then built what he dubbed an “anti-erosion fence” by installing 30-inch rebar stakes, stainless steel wire, clamps, aluminum flashing and zip ties. A few weeks later, Orr posted a video documenting his work to his YouTube channel, where he’d previously shared about hiking and other DIY projects. In the video, which Orr has since made private, he said he’d never performed trail work.

A view from Baldy Road leading up the Mt. Baldy Notch in the San Gabriel Mountains.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

The people of the internet were initially grateful. “I can’t imagine doing this in my backyard let alone at 9,350 ft. You are THE MAN,” one YouTube user wrote. “I’ve hiked the backbone dozens of times and will remember you with gratitude every time I come across this section,” another person said. One person said his son was one of the three people who died while hiking the Backbone Trail in late December, and he wanted to connect with Orr.

But, as the video’s view count ticked up, concern over Orr’s work mounted into rage.

Two camps developed: Those who lauded Orr’s efforts and those who felt he should be held accountable for what they argued was damage to the trail. “I give this guy an A+ on his intentions and effort,” a Reddit user wrote on a post about Orr’s video. “If a section is dangerous, it should ‘look’ dangerous. To make it look safe, creates a bigger hazard as people will come to rely/trust in what is actually a DIY retaining wall. What happens when that eventually gives way? What if someone is hurt/killed as a direct result of this DIY project?”

In this edition of The Wild, our weekly outdoors newsletter, I will report out the current status of the trail where Orr completed his work. I will discuss how we got here — where an individual, not the U.S. Forest Service, tackled a trail repair — and where we go from here, including how you can do your part without upsetting half the outdoors corner of the internet and violating federal policy.

First, let’s talk about Mt. Baldy and how people usually get there.

A segment of the Devil’s Backbone Trail that hikers take to the Mt. Baldy summit.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

Mt. San Antonio, commonly referred to as Mt. Baldy for its appearance, is a 10,064-foot peak in the San Gabriel Mountains and is the highest point in Los Angeles County.

Outside of winter, when much of the trail can become covered in snow and ice, most hikers reach Mt. Baldy via two routes. They start near the Manker Flat campground and walk Falls and Baldy roads until they either turn north-ish onto the Baldy Bowl Trail, often referred to as the “Ski Hut” route because hikers pass the Sierra Club’s green building, or hikers continue on Baldy Road until they reach the Mt. Baldy Notch. From here, hikers start the Devil’s Backbone Trail first by trekking up a fire road and then taking on a grueling, narrow 1.9(ish)-mile jaunt that gains about 1,500 feet and always makes me question my life choices about halfway through.

The Devil’s Backbone is named as such because of its shape, including segments where hikers walk a narrow stretch with steep drop-offs on both sides. This steepness is part of what makes it susceptible to erosion — and why only serious, well-equipped mountaineers should traverse it during the winter.

The Devil’s Backbone Trail, per the U.S. Forest Service, is 3.24 miles long, starting at Baldy Notch and ends at Mt. Baldy Summit.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

On Sunday, I headed up Baldy Road to see how Orr’s repairs were holding. I am active in the r/socalhiking Reddit community, where I first learned of the story, and had already seen images showing a hole developing at the start of Orr’s repairs.

But no one had pinpointed exactly where they were.

Once I reached the Devil’s Backbone, a hiker warned me about a particularly steep and narrow section he’d just traversed.

“Is this the part with the repairs?” I asked.

“No, that part is way up, and it is already breaking down,” he told me.

I then chatted with two high schoolers coming back from summiting Baldy, one of whom hopes to attend a University of California school to study environmental science. “A little bit of rain,” and it’s gone, he said of Orr’s repairs.

A segment of a repair performed by a local hiker that has started to fail.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

Just over a mile into the Devil’s Backbone, I spotted the shiny aluminum of Orr’s anti-erosion fence. And I spotted the hole where fill dirt has fallen through. Before Orr started his work, the trail was narrow — his work did widen the route, but how long will it hold?

Alan Coles, a trail crew leader with the San Gabriel Mountains Trailbuilders, which maintains routes in the backcountry and Baldy area, told me the answer is probably not long, especially given the rain and snow we could get this winter from El Niño.

A segment of the Devil’s Backbone Trail where a hiker attempted to widen and repair the crumbly trail.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

“Taking another look at the video, the problem with the trail may be due to a buildup of material washing down from above,” said Coles, who has 35 years of trail maintenance experience. “Often the best solution is to dig it out and lower the trail to the original alignment, which will also widen it. The problem with the repair is that the hardware he installed would make that difficult. In time, the material he used will come apart, and those stakes will get more exposed, leading to problems with people tripping on them, especially if there is snow.”

Coles said to begin work in Angeles National Forest, he must submit a list of trails that his organization wants to work on to the U.S. Forest Service. The agency’s archaeologist, biologist and other technical experts will review his list. If there are any issues with a particular trail that Coles has identified needs repairs — like if an endangered species is known to live in a creek next to the trail — the Forest Service could deny his request, thus leaving the trail unmaintained.

A hiker walks near the hole created by unauthorized repairs performed in early August.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

Coles said the Devil’s Backbone Trail is a “very difficult repair” for a lot of reasons, including its high altitude and the need for a crew to get permission to use the fire roads to shorten the distance they have to haul their gear. Coles said hikers often ask him when his crew will work on the Three T’s Trail, as the route has several downed trees and other issues, and his crew faces similar access issues.

Coles said he sympathizes with Orr’s reasoning for repairing the trail: People died in that area.

“His heart’s in the right place, but it really needs to be done with someone who says, ‘OK, here’s how you properly do a repair like that,’” Coles said.

It’s impossible when thinking about Orr’s repairs not to think about the old adage of, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions,” and the brutal irony is that, once you reach the Devil’s Backbone, you’re going to need more than that.

Two hikers navigate down the Devil’s Backbone Trail after summiting Mt. Baldy, the highest point in L.A. County.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

When I spoke to Orr after my hike, he said he hopes that he can join the trail crew to remove what he did and repair the trail properly.

“The first thing is, it was nothing but well intentions by somebody who loves the mountain and wants it to be safer for everybody,” Orr said. “I totally get that my first crack at this, I didn’t do everything right, and I’m actively working with the San Gabriel Mountains Trailbuilders to get it right before this winter.”

The final challenge, though, will be getting officials at the U.S. Forest Service to approve the work plan. A spokesperson at Angeles National Forest did not respond to my request for a comment or an interview for this story.

Orr’s trail repairs come at a time when outdoors lovers are feeling particularly protective of public lands. The Trump administration has continued its efforts to peel back layers of environmental protections, like the Roadless Rule, raising the alarm of park advocates who fear not even Yosemite is safe from development.

The sunset as viewed Sunday on a trail often referred to as the “Ski Hut” route.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

At the same time, the U.S. Forest Service and National Park Service have both seen massive staffing cuts during Trump’s second term, and this comes after decades of underfunded trail construction and repair.

In the early 1980s, “each of the five Angeles Forest districts had a full-time, paid trail crew of eight to 10 members. Now there are only summertime crews with three to four members. Forest Service officials and the agency’s critics agree that if it were not for the volunteer corps of 700 trail builders, the mountain paths would not be repaired for years,” according to a 1993 Times story.

Those crews, Coles said, were one of the casualties from a swath of federal budget cuts in the 1980s. A 1986 Times story noted that, in just four years, “the amount of federal money allocated for trail maintenance nationwide and in Southern California … dropped about 50%.”

“For the most part, without the volunteers, you wouldn’t have a trail system today,” Angeles National Forest official Don Gilliland told The Times in 1993.

The sun goes down, casting orange and pink hues through the clouds above the San Gabriel Mountains near Mt. Baldy Village.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

The agency continues to rely heavily on volunteers. The U.S. Forest Service estimates that it has about $10.8 billion in deferred maintenance, including $241 million in deferred trail maintenance and almost $70 million in trail-bridge deferred maintenance, according to a recent budget document.

In an analysis of that backlog of work, officials with the U.S. Government Accountability Office heard from one regional official who told them that the trail maintenance program “is held together by Band-Aids and baling wire.”

If you’d like to be part of that baling wire, you can join Orr in joining a local trail crew. There are several who service the San Gabriel Mountains and their foothills.

It is easy to read about Orr’s efforts and point out the obvious mistakes he made. It’s another thing to take action, whether that’s donating to local trail crews or volunteering on their work days. I’ll see you out there, focusing on the latter.

3 things to do

A coyote drinks water puddling near the golf course at Griffith Park.

(Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)

1. Document dicots and deer in L.A.
The Los Angeles Public Library, along with other city agencies, will launch this year’s L.A. Nature Quest at 9 a.m. Saturday at the Griffith Park Visitor Center. The L.A. Nature Quest is an annual monthlong effort to document as much of L.A.’s flora and fauna as possible using iNaturalist, a citizen science app. Attendees will be guided by rangers and other experts in a morning of outdoor exploration and nature journaling. Downloading iNaturalist beforehand is recommended. Register at eventbrite.com.

2. Sit down and spy birds in Pasadena
The Pasadena Audubon Society will host a seated birding experience at 8 a.m. Saturday on the Gamble House lawn (4 Westmoreland Place in Pasadena). Guests should bring water, sunscreen, a lawn chair or blanket, and a hat. Participants can bring their own binoculars, but there will be some to loan out for those without. Register at eventbrite.com.

3. Marvel at mushrooms in Monrovia
Monrovia’s Canyon Park Nature Center will host the opening reception for the Mushrooms of the San Gabriel Mountains at 10 a.m. Sunday. Mycologist Aaron Tupac will share with guests about how and why they photographed the specimens shown in the exhibit, along with sharing information about our local fungi populations. Learn more at Tupac’s Instagram page.

The must-read

Biologists collect olive ridley sea turtle eggs from nests on Southern California beaches.

(Huntington Beach Police Dept.)

In mid-September, two heart-shaped olive ridley sea turtles made history when they dug nests on Seal and Huntington beaches, marking the first documented natural sea turtle nests on the U.S. West Coast. Times staff writer Corinne Purtill wrote that biologists and cheloniophiles barely had time to celebrate before realizing that these nests were at risk of being destroyed by incoming storm surges and high tides. Biologists recovered just over 200 eggs. “We had to make some quick decisions,” said biologist Jonathan Snyder of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach on Friday. “This is the decision that we made, and I think it’s the best one for species recovery.”

Happy adventuring,

P.S.

Montrose Search and Rescue recently highlighted the perils of taking the wrong route to hike Strawberry Peak. Strawberry Peak, visible from several L.A. hikes, is the highest point in the front range of the San Gabriel Mountains. Montrose Search and Rescue recently rescued hikers, though, who’ve ended up on the mountaineering route. Their video highlights how crucial it is to know your route before you go — and to ensure you have a physical map with you in case you get lost. Stay safe out there, folks! (And don’t hike Strawberry Peak right now — it’s too hot.)

For more insider tips on Southern California’s beaches, trails and parks, check out past editions of The Wild. And to view this newsletter in your browser, click here.

The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art’s central plaza, which spreads out beneath the building’s curved, hovering form, was always meant to be a generous civic space. Ma Yansong, the museum’s architect, has called it the “Gateway” between the museum and Los Angeles, opening to both Expo Park and the surrounding South L.A. neighborhood.

But that gateway, it turns out, is more like a gate.

This weekend — the first that the museum was open to the public — fences covered in plastic greenery blocked entry to the plaza from both sides. Standing sentry, bizarrely, were tall, cartoonish statues — half storm troopers, half USC Trojans. Visitors were directed to enter through the museum’s two enclosed security booths off the plaza.

In the coming weeks, permanent plaza fences will be erected here — curvy stainless-steel structures that MAD Architects principal Dixon Junliang Lu compared to the lacy filigree of Art Nouveau architecture. Lu added that they would eventually be draped in real greenery, not the plastic version.

While certainly an improvement on the current barriers (which are a shockingly makeshift solution for a museum that cost over $1 billion), the plaza’s main entryways will remain gated off, confirmed both Lu and Lucas Museum spokesperson Seth Fowler.

Gates have been erected around the main courtyard of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art.

(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)

“It’s about creating the best possible visitor experience when you’re there, with an eye on safety,” said Fowler, who cited a need to protect the plaza from car traffic on both sides and the ability to control visitor flow among the reasons for the enclosure.

Visitors without tickets, Fowler added, are still able to enter the plaza, as well as the museum’s cafe and gift shop, after passing through security, “pending capacity limits.” They can enter the museum’s adjacent park without security screening.

Museums of course have legitimate security concerns, especially in and around such a high-traffic location. A growing list of threats, from violence to vandalism, has changed the calculus for what’s acceptable in public life. But surely the building’s talented design team could have developed a security plan that better preserved the plaza’s open arms? Lu acknowledged that the fence design had “evolved as the project developed and the operational and security requirements became more defined.”

When I visited the Lucas earlier this month for its press preview, I assumed the plaza’s (then chain-link) fences were temporary — a byproduct of construction still underway. I had no idea that its primary entryways would remain closed off to the public.

The plaza is one of the museum’s most powerful gestures, creating much-needed civic room for Expo Park, and the city. The gates blocking it, and the security checkpoints along its flanks, will dramatically limit the public’s desire to enter, and change the tenor and experience of a space that should feel porous and inclusive. What could have been a grand welcome has become a gated off, highly controlled space that now feels separate from the park and the neighborhood. Sure, anyone can come, but they are no longer invited.

Art Nouveau style fencing will eventually replace the temporary green fencing, but guests will still be directed through security in order to enter the museum’s main courtyard.

(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)

Just a few miles away at LACMA’s new David Geffen Galleries, visitors can enter the plazas beneath that building without first passing through security. In fact, I don’t know of a single civic plaza (and there are not enough!) in Los Angeles that requires passing through security checkpoints to enter. Think about this scenario in other cities. In New York, can you imagine having to go through metal detectors to sit at the Met steps? Or to enter Central Park?

Speaking of parks, it’s inconsistent and puzzling that the museum’s beautiful park, which edges right up to the building, can be entered without having to also pass through security. I, for one, am thankful. Access to this area is already being limited to some degree. Its long fences, with relatively small openings, are not exactly screaming “come in.” The green space, as it was this Saturday, will be closed to nonticket holders on USC game days. And if locals who live to the west of the museum want to reach Expo Park outside of the Lucas park’s hours — 8 a.m. to sunset — they need to make their way around the entire complex; which a few are already grumbling about.

It’s hard not to wonder whether these barriers represent something more than security: the extension into public space of the gated, closely guarded world inhabited by co-founders George Lucas, Mellody Hobson and those in their orbit. Is this truly what museum security requires, or has the logic of a private compound shaped an institution that was supposed to welcome the city? That is the uneasy promise of privately controlled public space: It looks open to everyone, but access ultimately depends on the owner’s discretion.

It is an especially peculiar contradiction for a museum whose site is being leased from the state at just $30 a year and was founded to celebrate the “people’s art” — comics, illustrations, movie imagery — and to bring that art to the broadest possible public. Renderings introducing the project never showed the walls and fences that now cover the plaza’s perimeter. (A model produced later, now in the museum, does.)

Temporary fencing around the Lucas Museum, alongside the Art Nouveau style fencing that will eventually replace it.

(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)

I last encountered this type of scenario when visiting the Eiffel Tower, whose base has been closed since Paris’s 2015 terrorist attacks. (The attacks did not occur at the tower itself.) Its sealed perimeter, only accessible via lines and screening, now makes one of the world’s wonders feel less like a wondrous part of the city than an attraction held behind glass.

I’m not suggesting we leave major public spaces vulnerable. But security can be built into buildings’ plazas in myriad ways without sealing them off: reinforced planters and seating can stop vehicles; grade changes, landscapes and water features can establish protective distance; clear sight lines, lighting, cameras and visible staff can improve oversight; and retractable barriers can be deployed during large events or credible threats. Screening can remain at the museum doors, leaving outdoor space free.

At the end of the day, civic space depends on a willingness to share some level of uncertainty. A public plaza brings all kinds of people together, including those we don’t know and can’t entirely predict. If every risk leads us to add another checkpoint, fence or barrier, we may gain a sense of control but lose the ability to create the kind of public togetherness that forms a bonded city.

If this plaza, and this museum, are truly meant to serve the public it should be clear that all are welcome once they arrive. Openness is more than an architectural effect: It depends on having the freedom to enter without having to justify our presence.

Country western star Wynonna Judd is confirming that she and her sister, Emmy Award-nominated actor Ashley Judd, do not have a relationship.

She spoke with People ahead of the release of her 10th solo studio album, “The Hard Truth,” which drops Friday, and revealed that the rift between the sisters is still there after years of on and off disharmony.

Wynonna told the outlet that Ashley hadn’t heard the album, as the sisters are not “connected.”

“We’re taking a break, which all families can relate to,” she said. “She’s doing her thing, and I’m doing mine.”

In April 2022, Wynonna and Ashley’s mother, Naomi Judd, died by suicide at 76 after a lifelong battle with depression. Naomi and Wynonna made up the Grammy-winning duo the Judds.

At the time, the sisters released a statement together, writing, “Today we sisters experienced a tragedy. We lost our beautiful mother to the disease of mental illness. … We are shattered. We are navigating profound grief and know that as we loved her, she was loved by her public. We are in unknown territory.”

The following month, the two appeared at the annual Medallion Ceremony, where the Judds were inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, and the sisters spoke on behalf of their mother.

“While this is so much about the Judds as a duo, I want to take a moment to recognize my sister, a GOAT,” Ashley said at the ceremony. “Do you know what that means? I don’t think she knows I’m calling her the greatest of all time. She lives on a farm. She’s being a little literal.”

Ashley told the crowd that growing up as the younger sister of Wynonna, she got to “bask in this voice that was around the house, and I’ve always been so proud of the music and so proud of you. … So I know that we’re talking a lot about Mom tonight, as we should be. Our beautiful mother, and I want you to know that you also are being inducted to the Hall of Fame tonight. And newspapers don’t get much right these days, but when the Los Angeles Times said you were Elvis-like, they got it right. And I love you, and I’m proud of you. And Mom is proud of you, and she always was.”

By October 2022, rumors were flying that the sisters were fighting over their mother’s will, a claim that Wynonna shot down while speaking with People.

“Someone told me while I was at Ashley’s house, ‘Hey, did you know that they’re saying this about you?’ I went, ‘Huh? I’m fighting with Ashley?’” Wynonna said. “Fighting over what? I have such a great life. Ashley has a great life. Why would we be fighting over the will?”

This wasn’t the first time a feud was reported between the two. Back in January 2015, Wynonna gave a teary-eyed account of the disconnect during an appearance on AXS TV’s “The Big Interview With Dan Rather.”

“The only thing I have in common with my sister is a father missing and a mother that’s both of ours. She and I are very different. We don’t communicate, nor do we spend time together, and that’s a long history of being apart,” Wynonna told Rather.

Wynonna said that she and Ashley were dysfunctional, didn’t agree on anything and developed separate lives, but she cared for her younger sister growing up.

“I raised Ashley, so I think there’s a lot of work we still have to do about where do we find the ‘sister’ in all of this,” she said. “She called me sister mommy, and I really had a hard time with that, because I was like, I don’t want to be your mommy. I want to be your sister.”

The two candidates to become California’s next governor painted vastly different portraits of the state they want to lead during a televised CNN debate Wednesday night — though they both agreed the state faces tremendous challenges.

Democrat Xavier Becerra, leading in polls, cast the state as an economic engine and a critical bulwark against the disastrous economic policies and creeping authoritarianism of the Trump administration, but also a victim of Trump policies, including tariffs and the war in Iran, that have made life less affordable and the nation less safe.

Becerra said he would work hard to help struggling Californians — including by cutting red tape on housing and regulating AI to ensure it doesn’t destroy jobs — while his challenger, Republican Steve Hilton, would harm them further by backing President Trump’s agenda at every turn.

Hilton, endorsed by Trump, blamed the state’s most entrenched ills on years of Democratic governance, awash in unnecessary state bureaucracy and regulation that have made it wildly unaffordable, and wrongly obsessed with fighting the president instead of bringing down costs and fixing related local issues like homelessness.

Hilton said he would help struggling Californians by cutting taxes, cutting the cost of building new housing, eliminating fraud and bringing common sense back to state policy-making.

Both candidates came out of the gate on offense, and at times it got intensely personal, particularly on immigration — with Becerra accusing Hilton of welcoming white immigrants into the country while rejecting Latino immigrants, and Hilton accusing Becerra of handing migrant children over to sex and labor traffickers during his time as U.S. Health and Human Services secretary.

With ballots soon arriving in voters’ mailboxes and the Nov. 3 midterm election rapidly approaching, the hour-long debate — moderated by CNN anchors Jake Tapper and Dana Bash in Burbank and aired live by the national news network — provided the public with its latest look at two candidates vastly different both in politics and campaign style.

Becerra, a former Congress member from Los Angeles, California attorney general and Health secretary under President Biden, surged past a slate of other Democrats to win the June primary after onetime front runner Rep. Eric Swalwell dropped out of the race amid sexual assault allegations. Hilton placed second after Republican voters and others coalesced behind his message to shake up Sacramento — earning him the right to face off against Becerra in November.

Hilton, a former British political aide, former Fox News host and Silicon Valley entrepreneur, has been crisscrossing the state looking for votes anywhere he can find them — an uphill battle given registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, and opposition to Trump is widespread in the state and growing even among Republican voters.

A poll this month by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies and co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times found 58% of likely voters surveyed said they support Becerra, compared with 33% who back Hilton — a slight increase to Becerra’s lead compared with an August IGS poll. California voters identified the high cost of living as their top concern, but that was followed closely by opposition to the Trump administration.

The same poll found found that 76% of Republican voters in the state approve of the president’s performance, down from 83% last year.

Becerra has taken a less visible approach to campaigning, with critics accusing him of intentionally keeping a low profile in an effort to cruise to victory in a state that hasn’t elected a Republican to statewide office in two decades.

“I just want to say thank you to CNN for bringing Xavier out of hiding,” Hilton said at the beginning of Wednesday’s face-off. “He’s barely been seen in public since the primary four months ago; it’s very important we have this debate.”

During the debate, both candidates seemed prepared to focus on the lack of affordability — namely by blaming the other’s political party for it. But they also discussed artificial intelligence and data centers, immigration policy and, of course, Trump.

Tackling gas prices, high cost of living

California has some of the highest housing and energy costs in the nation, and affordability tops the list of concerns for likely voters. It also was the first issue the candidates debated.

Hilton has made the cost of living a central theme of his campaign, with a plan he calls “Califordable” to cut gas prices and end income taxes on earnings up to $150,000. He blamed California’s high costs on Democrats, who have controlled the Legislature and statewide offices for more than 15 years. Hilton says he can lower costs by slashing onerous state regulations on businesses.

Hilton said the “quickest way to get more money in people’s pockets is for the government to take less out” and to reduce regulations to allow more housing to be built — including in “10 new cities” he said he would help build in the state.

Becerra has blamed higher prices on Trump’s tariffs and the war against Iran. In response to attacks from the U.S. and Israel, Iran has for months choked off a major oil trade route, sending global gas prices soaring — to a national average of $4.48 per gallon this month.

Becerra said Hilton’s plan to end income taxes would amount to a massive tax cut for “billionaires and millionaires” that would take money from schools, healthcare and other critical services. “The math doesn’t add up to what he’s talking about. He’s going to have to take it out of somewhere. It will come out of our schools,” Becerra said.

Becerra said he would bring down costs for people by cutting red tape, including on housing, and fighting the Trump administration — which he said is the real driver of cost increases. He also said he has helped create millions of jobs during his career.

Agree but disagree on AI and data centers

Hilton and Becerra both support regulations for data centers and artificial intelligence companies, a sign of growing bipartisan pushback seen across the country.

Hilton said he wants California to take a leading role in regulating AI, given much of the industry is located in the state, and expressed concern about losing AI jobs to other states such as Texas and Arizona. Hilton questioned whether Becerra would have the political courage to rein in the industry, saying his campaign has received funding from it.

When Bash asked Hilton if those companies should be able to “self-police,” as Trump has suggested, Hilton said, “We’ll have to see.” He also said he appreciates the effort by Trump to get assurances from AI companies on safety during a recent summit, and he would work to make sure that those promises are upheld.

Becerra derided Trump’s deal as a meaningless “pinky promise” that does not guarantee a safe path forward. He said he would lead efforts to reach real and meaningful regulations but also work directly with local communities on what they want.

“If someone wants to come in and build a data center that creates more jobs in the community, adds more energy to our grid, and it actually protects and adds more water capacity, then let’s talk,” he said. “But it has to be good for the community.”

Sharp attacks on immigration

Becerra has faced bipartisan criticism of how Health and Human Services cared for the influx of unaccompanied immigrant children during the pandemic.

Hilton has hammered Becerra on it, and at the debate accused him of sending “thousands of young children directly into the clutches of child sex and labor traffickers.”

Becerra was attacked by Democratic rivals in the gubernatorial primary in the aftermath of a Pulitzer Prize-winning series in the New York Times, including an article that said thousands of migrant children who entered the United States between 2021 and 2023 worked in slaughterhouses, factories and other dangerous jobs that violated child labor laws. The investigation also alleged that tens of thousands of the children Becerra’s agency released couldn’t be found because he relaxed screening of relatives and sponsors.

Becerra repeatedly has said that despite a lack of congressional funding for licensed-care facilities dismantled by the Trump administration, his staff worked hard to vet the people who the children would be placed with.

At the debate, he called Hilton’s claims “Trump talking points.” He also said more needs to be done to ensure children aren’t separated from their immigrant parents.

Becerra also has slammed the Trump administration for its mass deportation program and immigration crackdown, which has sent immigration enforcement agents into cities across the country, including Los Angeles.

Hilton said he would work to “lower the temperature” in the immigration debate and “prioritize the removal of dangerous criminals,” which he said is not occurring in California because Democrats are playing “politics” with the Trump administration.

Becerra, the son of immigrants, said California welcomed Hilton as an immigrant, and Hilton “welcomed ICE mercenaries” into California in return. He also accused Hilton of welcoming immigrants that look like Hilton, who is white, while working to remove immigrants who look like Becerra, who is Latino.

“I have fought all my life to make life better for immigrants, to represent them well, to defend them, to let them grow and build like my parents. But here’s the problem I have with your policies: You seem to welcome immigrants who look like you, but deport immigrants who look like me,” Becerra said.

Hilton called that “disgraceful.”

Trump, Trump and more Trump

Hilton repeatedly has praised Trump and his policies and consolidated support among California Republicans after Trump endorsed him before the June primary. But Trump’s endorsement could be an albatross in the Nov. 3 election, given his low approval ratings — particularly in California.

Becerra repeatedly hammered Hilton as a Trump acolyte, so much so that Hilton said that it was Becerra’s only attack line, and that Becerra “takes no responsibility” for Democratic policies that have harmed California for years.

“All you ever say is Trump, Trump, Trump, and that’s nothing but an insult to every Californian who is desperate for something to change in this state, and all you’re offering is more of the same,” Hilton said.

Becerra countered that Hilton embraced Trump during the primary.

“Your words, Trump, Trump, Trump. Because he is your supporter,” Becerra said. “You chased his endorsement.”

Where they stand on billionaire’s tax, schools and other quick hits

• Proposition 40, the billionaires tax: Both Becerra and Hilton oppose the controversial wealth tax proposal on the ballot that would enact a one-time 5% levy on billionaires’ assets to largely replace $100 billion in federal healthcare funding cuts to California.
• Proposition 39, voter ID: Hilton expressed support for the ballot measure, which would require voters to present ID at the polls or write a special pin on their mail-in ballot. Becerra, who opposes the measure, claimed the initiative is part of an effort by Trump and his supporters to interfere in elections.
• Improving schools: Fewer than half of third-grade students read at grade level. Hilton said it’s a “catastrophe” that exemplifies Democratic failure in the state. Becerra conceded that the school system is not “well coordinated” but supports transitional kindergarten, a new pre-K grade created by Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Who’s ready (or not) for the Dodgers?

From Maddie Lee: Dodgers right fielder Kyle Tucker has never shied away from just how bad his performance at the plate was for much of his first season in Los Angeles.

For the first five months of the season, when he’d show brief glimpses of progress before sinking back into an extended slump, Tucker’s .683 OPS was the third-worst among Dodgers hitters with at least 100 plate appearances, better than only Hyeseong Kim and Kyle Freeland, who both spent time in triple A.

In September, however, he found a sustainable adjustment. He fixed his bat path, extending through the ball more consistently instead of pulling off of it. He posted a .889 OPS in September, on par with his four straight All-Star seasons before signing with the Dodgers.

Now, all of a sudden, he looks like a potential difference-maker in the postseason.

“The last month or so is more or less what I expect out of myself,” Tucker said in a recent conversation with The Times. “The biggest thing is we have an opportunity now being in the playoffs to win another World Series. Once the playoffs start, you can forget about any stats or personal numbers. The only one that really matters is the win column. So that’s just what I’m gonna try and contribute towards.”

Here’s how some other key players are trending going into the postseason:

Continue reading here

The Dodgers have an old roster. But that isn’t necessarily a drawback in October

Much competition to make Lakers’ roster

From Thuc Nhi Nguyen: Walker Kessler wasn’t focused on the stats. He wasn’t really counting the number of shots he swatted — “one or two” — or lobs he dunked — “like four probably” — in his official Lakers practice debut Tuesday.

The only thing the star center cared about was the competition on the court. He and his teammates delivered on that, Kessler said with a smile.

The Lakers opened training camp Tuesday with a focus on competition as the new-look team takes shape. Six of the team’s top nine players from last season are gone. A month’s worth of practices and five preseason games are the stage as players audition to fill the vacant roles.

“This is a meritocracy,” coach JJ Redick said. “You got to earn your minutes, and you cheer for your teammates while you’re doing it.”

Redick can confidently lock in three starters in Luka Doncic, Austin Reaves and Kessler. The other two starting positions, and even the last spots on the roster as the Lakers need to trim at least one player to reach the NBA-maximum of 15 guaranteed contracts by the Oct. 21 season opener, remain up for grabs.

Continue reading here

Swanson: Lakers paid Austin Reaves to be a star. Now they need him to prove his durability

Olympic torch relay to start in Atlanta

From Thuc Nhi Nguyen: She became an Olympic champion in Seoul. Janet Evans then won her fourth gold medal in Barcelona. But the star swimmer’s greatest Olympic moment came outside of a pool in Atlanta.

LA28 announced Tuesday it will begin the U.S. portion of the 2028 Olympic torch relay in Atlanta in a return to the city that hosted the United States’ last Summer Games and provided the Olympic movement with one of its most iconic torch relay moments. The city where Evans passed the Olympic flame to Muhammad Ali changed the swimming champion’s view on the Games and fueled her desire to bring the torch back as LA28 hopes to write an equally influential chapter of Olympic history.

“I realized when I carried that torch that the flame represents so much more than medals,” said Evans, now LA28’s chief athlete officer. “It certainly represents victory and all those attributes about the Olympics. But it also brings people together, and it’s a symbol of hope and what the Olympic movement really does for everyone.”

Continue reading here

MLB postseason schedule

National League
No. 3 Atlanta vs. No. 6 Philadelphia
at Atlanta 5, Philadelphia 3 (box score)
Wednesday at Atlanta, 11 a.m., NBC/Peacock
*Thursday at Atlanta, 11 a.m., NBC/Peacock

No. 4 San Diego vs. No. 5 Chicago
at San Diego 8, Chicago 0 (box score)
Wednesday at San Diego, 7 p.m., Peacock/NBCSN
*Thursday at San Diego, 7 p.m., Peacock/NBCSN

American League
No. 3 Houston vs. No. 6 Chicago
Chicago 6, at Houston 3 (box score)
Wednesday, 2 p.m., Peacock/NBCSN
*Thursday, 2 p.m., Peacock/NBCSN

No. 4 New York vs. No. 5 Boston
at New York 9, Boston 0 (box score)
Wednesday, 5 p.m., NBC/Peacock
*Thursday, 5 p.m., NBC/Peacock

*-if necessary

Note: NLDS and ALDS start Saturday.
NLCS starts Sunday, Oct. 11
ALCS starts Monday, Oct. 12
World Series starts Friday, Oct. 23

This day in sports history

1939 — Fordham participates in the world’s first televised American football game. In front of the sport’s first live TV audience, the Rams defeats Waynesburg College, 34-7.

1984 — The Rams set an NFL record with three safeties in a 33-12 victory over the New York Giants. Two of the safeties are on blocked punts in the end zone.

1995 — Prairie View A&M sets the college football record for consecutive losses with a 64-0 loss to Grambling State. It is the team’s 51st straight defeat, an NCAA record for any level.

2007 — Osi Umenyiora has six of the New York Giants’ NFL record-tying 12 sacks in a 16-3 victory over Philadelphia.

2007 — Detroit scores an NFL-record, 34 points in the fourth quarter of a 37-27 victory over Chicago. The Lions combine with Bears for 48 points — also a league record.

2007 — Brett Favre passes Dan Marino to become the NFL leader in career touchdown passes, throwing Nos. 421 and 422 in Green Bay’s 23-16 victory over Minnesota.

2007 — Germany defeats Brazil 2-0 in the final of the FIFA Women’s World Cup held in Shanghai, China.

2012 — New England beats Buffalo 52-28 to become the first team since the 1950 New York Giants (48 points) to score at least 45 second-half points in a game in which it trailed at halftime (14-7). The Patriots become the second team in NFL history with a 300-yard passer (Tom Brady, 340 yards), two 100-yard rushers (Brandon Bolden, 137 and Steven Ridley, 106) and two 100-yard receivers (Wes Welker, 129 and Rob Gronkowski, 104). The only other team to accomplish the feat was the 2008 Packers.

2015 — The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agrees that the NCAA’s use of college athletes’ names, images and likenesses in video games and TV broadcasts violate antitrust laws but strikes down a plan to allow schools to pay players up to $5,000.

2017 — Troy’s defense forces four turnovers and the surging Trojans upset No. 25 LSU 24-21. Troy is the first team from outside the Southeastern Conference to win in LSU’s Death Valley since UAB in 2000.

2018 — The Ryder Cup is won by Europe 17½-10½ at Le Golf National in Saint-Quentin-En-Yvelines, France. The home team secures the victory when Phil Mickelson knocks one in the water at the par-3 16th hole, conceding his match to Francesco Molinari right on the tee box. Molinari becomes the first European player to go 5-0 in the competition since the current format was adapted in 1979. Tiger Woods loses all four of his matches, capped by a 2-and-1 loss to 23-year-old Jon Rahm of Spain, the youngest player in the event.

2018 — Brittney Griner scores 15 points to help the United States beat Australia 73-56 and win the FIBA Women’s Basketball World Cup.

Compiled by the Associated Press

This day in baseball history

1904 — Doc White of the Chicago White Sox pitched his fifth shutout in eighteen days, a 4-0 win over the New York Yankees.

1915 — The Boston Red Sox clinched the American League pennant when St. Louis beat Detroit 8-2, giving Boston a 2 1/2-game margin.

1916 — New York’s Rube Benton pitched a 4-0 one-hitter over the Boston Braves to give the Giants their record 26th straight win in the first game of a doubleheader.

1927 — Babe Ruth hit his 60th home run of the season in the eighth inning off Tom Zachary to lead the New York Yankees to a 4-2 victory over the Washington Senators.

1934 — Dizzy Dean beat the Cincinnati Reds, 9-0, for his 30th victory of the year as the St. Louis Cardinals clinched the NL pennant.

1934 — New York’s Babe Ruth played his final game as a Yankee, going 0 for 3 with a walk, in a 5-3 loss to the Washington Senators at Griffith Stadium.

1945 — Hank Greenberg’s grand slam in the top of the ninth inning gave the Detroit Tigers a 6-3 win over the St. Louis Browns and the American League pennant on the last day of the season.

1947 — In the first televised World Series, the New York Yankees beat the Brooklyn Dodgers, 5-3, in the opening game.

1951 — Jackie Robinson homered in the 14th inning to give the Brooklyn Dodgers a 9-8 victory over the Philadelphia Phillies, tying the New York Giants for first place in the National League and forcing a playoff.

1962 — Willie Mays homered to give the San Francisco Giants a 2-1 victory over the Houston Colt 45s in the season’s final day. That, coupled with the Dodgers’ 1-0 loss to the St. Louis Cardinals, forced a playoff for the NL pennant.

1972 — Roberto Clemente doubled off Jon Matlack during Pittsburgh’s 5-0 victory over the New York Mets. The hit was the 3,000th and last for the Pirates star, who was killed in a plane crash during the offseason.

1984 — Mike Witt of the Angels tossed 97 pitches in a perfect game against the Texas Rangers, winning 1-0.

1988 — Dave Stieb of the Toronto Blue Jays lost a no-hit bid with two out in the ninth for the second consecutive start and finished with a 4-0 one-hitter over the Baltimore Orioles.

1992 — George Brett became the 18th player to get 3,000 hits in the Kansas City Royals’ 4-0 win over the Angels at Anaheim. Brett went 4-for-5 and got the milestone with a single in the seventh off rookie reliever Tim Fortugno.

2007 — The New York Mets missed the playoffs when Tom Glavine was tagged for seven runs during the first inning of a season-ending 8-1 loss to Florida. No major league team had owned a lead of seven games or more with 17 to play and failed to finish in first place. New York, which had that margin on Sept. 12, matched the largest lead blown in September.

2014 — The Kansas City Royals overcame a 7-3 lead to force extra innings and outlasted Oakland 9-8 in 12 innings in the AL wild-card playoff. This was the first wild-card game to go extra innings.

2017 — Detroit’s Andrew Romine became the fifth player in baseball history to play all nine positions in one game, helping the Tigers to a 3-2 win over Minnesota.

2022 — Pinch-hitting for Luis Torrens with two out in the 9th, Cal Raleigh blasts a 406-foot homer against Domingo Acevedo to give Seattle a 2-1 win over Oakland and clinch a postseason spot for the first time since 2001, the longest active drought in the majors.

Compiled by the Associated Press

Until next time…

That concludes today’s newsletter. If you have any feedback, ideas for improvement or things you’d like to see, email me at houston.mitchell@latimes.com. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a landmark bill that would give a financial boost to California’s struggling newsrooms.

Assembly Bill 2222 will create refundable tax credits for California local news organizations based on the number of journalists they employ. It passed through both houses. It marks an innovative yet controversial attempt to slow the decline of local journalism.

The bill, called the Community Newsroom Employment and Workforce Sustainability Act, works by assigning a “job retention credit” of $20,000 per journalist for up to five positions, and after that $15,000 for every additional journalist. Part-time positions will be awarded half-credits. It also stacks an additional $15,000 credit for each new hire, to incentivize expanding journalist head counts.

Before signing the bill Wednesday morning, Newsom spoke about what he called the “assault on the free press and the First Amendment..coming from Washington D.C. and Donald Trump.”

“It’s journalists that need to report those stories and local journalists that need to uncover and sort of peel back the facade if democracy is going to survive, let alone thrive,” Newsom said.

The bill was supported by the California News Publishers Assn., of which the Los Angeles Times is a member and a wide range of other community news boosters. Backers said it could be a lifeline to local news organizations, many of which have struggled to maintain staffing levels over the past two decades.

California has lost more than 12,000 of its local journalists since 2002, according to nonprofit advocacy group Rebuild Local News. And almost 40% of all local U.S. newspapers have vanished, according to an annual report on the state of local news put out by Northwestern University’s Medill journalism school.

To pay for the credits, the bill would amend California’s tax code to align with a little-discussed component of President Trump’s “Big Beautiful” tax bill that expanded taxes on some companies by eliminating a deduction for executive salaries of over $1 million annually.

It is common practice for the state to consider aligning its tax code with the federal structure to make filing taxes easier and administering them more cheaply. But California has not yet sought to adopt this federal tax change, a move which would increase tax revenues to the state.

The California Taxpayers Assn. and groups representing business interests such as the California Chamber of Commerce oppose the bill because it raises taxes on employers that they argue already face billions of dollars in new taxes.

They contend that the higher costs will be passed along to consumers.

The governor’s finance office issued an analysis opposing the bill for not including a cap on the tax credits, thus creating “unlimited fiscal liability to the state,” and argued the bill mainly subsidizes existing activity rather than encouraging the creation of new jobs.

While speaking with reporters on Wednesday, Newsom acknowledged some of the concerns that have been raised about those who will receive benefits from the bill’s funds, specifically hedge funds and billionaire owners and outlets who he says spread propaganda.

“It does subsidize those that don’t need to be subsidized,” he said. “We have hedge funds in this space. We have billionaires in this space. We have people that are profiteering in this space by gutting the newsrooms and extracting value out of the space that also are the beneficiaries.”

Newsom said he chose not to veto the bill because he believes its benefits outweigh the liabilities. He added that he hopes the legislature and next governor can work to narrow down who benefits most from the legislation.

“We should not be subsidizing hedge funds,” he said. “We should be focused on where the need is the greatest, in my humble opinion, and I do think when you have no cap, the limitlessness of this…to some of the most well-heeled organizations, where now they simply could pull from this bill the benefits that they didn’t even ask for or need, is self-evident.”

Assemblymember Chris Ward (D-San Diego), who authored the bill, said the governor’s signature shows California’s commitment to the free press at a time when newsrooms are shrinking and misinformation is rampant.

“Local journalism is the backbone of an informed democracy, and today California made clear that the people doing this essential work are worth investing in,” Ward said in a statement. “This historic investment will help keep reporters in our communities, strengthen nonprofit and public media, and ensure Californians continue to have access to trusted, fact-based local news.”

In signing the bill, Newsom emphasized the role of journalism in uncovering scandal and wrongdoing.

“The L.A. Times to their credit did a big investigative piece on Bell, and people getting paid a million dollars in some cases, local government officials, a million damn dollars a year. No one would have known had it not been for local journalism. How many more Bells are out there, not just in this state, but all across the country?”

An interactive, floor-to-ceiling walk-through “Dune” attraction is coming to Los Angeles in November, and it promises spectacle, as well as a bit of mystery. Step around, and potentially inside, awe-inspiring vehicles from the film, or come face-to-face with the Bene Gesserit, a group of priestesses who possess, among other things, the ability to bend the will of others.

In one centerpiece of the exhibit, guests will be asked to take their so-called “test of humanity,” an opportunity to place one’s hand in a box and, in the lore of the “Dune” franchise, experience a none-too-pleasant sensation. It’s a battle of will, and intellect, and at “Dune: The Experience,” the hope is it will be fun.

“Dune: The Experience” is an immersive, walk-through exhibit coming to downtown Los Angeles.

(Fever / Legendary Entertainment )

“I don’t want to spoil exactly what happens when you put your hand in the box, but it is intended to be somewhat shocking, participatory and to put people on edge,” says Rob Shalhoub, a team lead at Fever, which is producing the event in partnership with Legendary Entertainment. “It really immerses you into the intensity of these films, where you’re up close and personal with these characters.”

“Dune: The Experience” is planned to launch in November in support of the theatrical release of Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune: Part Three,” which is out on Dec. 18. The event doesn’t have an opening date or an end date yet, but it is intended to tour. It will be in Los Angeles at a location in downtown’s Art’s District at least through the end of December. Expect costumes, props and life-size vehicles from the film, as well as projection-based rooms designed to immerse guests in the desert planet of Arrakis.

Tickets will go on sale Oct. 7 via the official “Dune: The Experience” web page and range in price from $30-$45.

There will be about a dozen rooms to explore, says Shalhoub, each designed for guests to spend around five minutes in. Some will feature hidden messages within ancient carvings, while others will emphasize photo opportunities with Paul Atreides’ throne, allowing guests to attempt their best Timothée Chalamet impression. “Dune: The Experience” is also built for attendees to linger, as it will feature an area with themed food and cocktails.

“It will reward your curiosity,” says Amado Trevino, director of interactive media and experiences for Legendary Entertainment. “Walls will begin to whisper throughout. You get to take Paul’s throne and see the desert come alive around you. Guests may even find out if they have what it takes to ride a sandworm.”

Different rooms are said to explore contrasting sensations, with some emphasizing touch, sound or visuals.

“We have this amazing projection room where you’re going to get to experience what it’s like in the desert in Arrakis, to really feel the scale of the desert and some of the dangers that lurk within the desert, namely sandworms,” Shalhoub says. “We’ve re-created these environments in a very interactive and immersive way.”

Adds Trevino, “There are things to see, there are things to hear, there are things to do, and there are things to feel. We’re showing beautiful artifacts from the productions, but you’re doing it from within the world of ‘Dune.’ ”

HIGH SCHOOL FLAG FOOTBALL
TUESDAY’S RESULTS

City Section
USC Hybrid 31, South LA College Prep 0

Southern Section
Adelanto 19, Arroyo Valley 0
Agoura 42, Newbury Park 25
Burbank Burroughs 26, Temple City 7
Bonita 51, Claremont 0
California Military Institute 31, Desert Christian Academy 0
Camarillo 34, Royal 14
Castaic 38, Canyon Country Canyon 6
Cate 32, Bishop Diego 25
Channel Islands 12, Buena 6
Chino Hills 12, Rancho Cucamonga 6
Dos Pueblos 6, Ventura 0
Eastside 20, Palmdale 0
Eisenhower 31, Carter 6
Etiwanda 20, Upland 0
Grand Terrace 18, Bloomington 6
Highland 16, Lancaster 6
Hueneme 19, Fillmore 12
JSerra 34, Santa Margarita 20
Jurupa Valley 19, San Bernardino 0
Oaks Christian 24, Thousand Oaks 0
Oxnard 28, San Marcos 18
Oxford Academy 12, Norwalk 6
Mater Dei 23, Orange Lutheran 0
Mission Viejo 33, Dana Hills 0
Moorpark 24, Oak Park 6
Moreno Valley 27, Corona 7
Pacific 40, Rubidoux 0
Paloma Valley 32, Liberty 7
Quartz Hill 12, Antelope Valley 6
Ramona 7, Miller 0
Rancho Verde 19, Heritage 12
Redlands East Valley 39, Redlands 0
Redondo Uniom 46, Windward 6
Rialto 48, Fontana 0
Rim of the World 27, Colton 8
Riverside North 19, Hillcrest 13
Riverside Poly 33, Canyon Springs 6
Santa Barbara 13, Oxnard Pacifica 0
SEED: LA 25, Burbank Providence 20
Sherman Oaks Notre Dame 49, Alemany 0
Simi Valley 26, Hart 12
St. Lucy’s 26, Los Osos 24
Summit 24, Jurupa Hills 18
Temecula Prep 27, Indio 0
Temescal Canyon 35, Tahquitz 7
Torrance 13, South Torrance 0
United Christian Academy 45, Calvary Baptist 0
Valencia 13, Saugus 0
Vista del Lago 19, Lakeside 6
Westlake 60, Calabasas 7
Westridge 12, Village Christian 6

MONDAY’S RESULTS

City Section
Birmingham 16, Taft 7
Brio College Prep 46, Belmont 0
Camino Nuevo 19, Animo De La Hoya 0
Carson 49, Gardena 0
Eagle Rock 26, Lincoln 13
El Camino Real 34, Chatsworth 0
Fairfax 16, Los Angeles University 0
Foshay 46, Santee 0
GALA 6, Crenshaw 0
GALA 13, Dorsey 6
Garfield 32, Bell 12
Jefferson 21, Angelou 6
Los Angeles 6, West Adams 0
LACES 13, WISH Academy 8
Los Angeles Hamilton 15, Venice 6
Los Angeles Roosevelt 26, Legacy 6
Los Angeles Wilson 34, Los Angeles Marshall 0
Hawkins 30, Port of Los Angeles 13
Huntington Park 6, South East 0
Manual Arts 26, Diego Rivera 0
Marquez 7, Maywood Academy 6
Maywood CES 24, Elizabeth 12
Narbonne 13, King/Drew 12
Orthopaedic 20, Alliance Levine 8
Palisades 7, Westchester 0
Panorama 39, San Fernando 0
Port of Los Angeles 33, Dymally 0
San Pedro 12, Wilmington Banning 7
Sotomayor 32, Torres 0
Stern 14, Collins Family 12
View Park 13, Stella 6

Southern Section
Alhambra 13, Mountain View 0
Anaheim 31, Orange 6
Anaheim Canyon 20, Esperanza 12
Aquinas 32, Woodcrest Christian 0
Arlington 18, Vista del lago 6
Baldwin Park 26, Azusa 19
Bishop Amat 42, St. Anthony 0
Bishop Montgomery 41, St. Bernard 6
Bolsa Grande 26, Western 25
Burbank Burroughs 32, Gabrielino 7
Camarillo 35, West Ranch 0
Cantwell-Sacred Heart 7, Ramona Convent 0
Canyon Springs 19, Hillcrest 0
Cerritos 25, Artesia 6
Chaffey 12, Ontario 0
Chaparral 32, Murrieta Valley 6
Chino 24, Montclair 0
Chino Hills 18, St. Lucy’s 6
Colony 18, San Dimas 12
Compton 32, Compton Early College 0
Corona 18, Norco 12
Corona Santiago 13, Compton Centennial 6
Costa Mesa 26, Buena Park 0
Covina 24, Hacienda Heights Wilson 6
Cypress 12, Crean Lutheran 6
Downey 28, Gahr 12
Edison 25, Los Alamitos 7
El Modena 27, El Dorado 12
El Monte 13, Arroyo 0
El Rancho 26, Bell Gardens 6
El Toro 28, Beckman 12
Estancia 39, Loara 13
Etiwanda 34, Rancho Cucamonga 6
Fullerton 7, Placentia Valencia 6
Garden Grove 20, Westminster 19
Garden Grove Santiago 12, Saddleback 6
Garey 26, Duarte 6
Glendora 19, Ayala 6
Glenn 21, Norwalk 19
Godinez 26, Ocean View 7
Great Oak 28, Temecula Valley 6
Harvard-Westlake 18, Brentwood 13
Heritage 13, Perris 12
Huntington Beach 40, Fountain Valley 18
Jurupa Valley 31, Entrepreneur 6
Laguna Beach 40, Irvine 6
Laguna Hills 28, Capistrano Valley Christian 19
La Habra 33, Garden Grove Pacifica 6
Lakewood 24, Mayfair 6
Lakewood St. Joseph 25, Gardena Serra 0
La Mirada 28, Santa Fe 24
La Puente 24, Pomona 18
La Serna 36, Bellflower 6
La Sierra 25, Norte Vista 0
Linfield Christian 45, Riverside Notre Dame 13
Loma Linda Academy d. CSDR, forfeit
Long Beach Cabrillo 34, Compton Centennial 0
Long Beach Poly 32, Long Beach Jordan 6
Mater Dei 33, Yorba Linda 20
Millikan 28, Long Beach Wilson 6
Monrovia 35, Temple City 7
Montebello 33, Rosemead 0
Moreno Valley 14, Valley View 0
Murrieta Mesa 12, Vista Murrieta 6
Newport Harbor 54, Marina 0
Northview 21, Rowland 9
Nuview Bridge 32, Desert Christian Academy 6
Ontario Christian 47, Arrowhead Christian 6
Oxford Academy 27, Pioneer 0
Paloma Valley 57, Rancho Christian 6
Patriot 13, Miller 8
Ramona 21, La Sierra 12
Rancho Alamitos 26, Century 6
Rancho Verde 14, Liberty 10
Redlands Adventist Academy 40, Calvary Baptist 6
Riverside King 30, Eastvale Roosevelt 24
Riverside North 12, San Jacinto Valley Academy 6
Riverside Poly 20, Hemet 6
Rosary 13, Newport Beach Pacifica Christian 12
Sage Hill 22, Portola 18
San Gabriel 25, Keppel 0
San Marino 39, South Pasadena 0
Santa Ana Foothill 49, Brea Olinda 6
Santa Ana Valley 26, Magnolia 18
Santa Paula 14, St. Bonaventure 6
Schurr 8, South El Monte 6
Segerstrom 26, La Palma Kennedy 6
Sierra Canyon 61, Immaculate Heart 0
Sierra Vista 6, Nogales 0
Sonora 39, Sunny Hills 25
South Hills 33, Alta Loma 8
St. Monica 53, Sacred Heart of Jesus 0
St. Paul 59, Mary Star of the Sea 0
Temescal Canyon 27, Rialto 6
Tesoro 40, San Juan Hills 19
Tustin 18, Katella 12
Upland 12, Los Osos 0
Vasquez 14, Golden Valley 6
Warren 25, California 8
West Covina 25, Charter Oak 14
Western Christian 73, Legacy College Prep 0
Westminster La Quinta 32, Savanna 0
West Valley 18, Banning 13
Whittier 20, Whitney 7
Woodbridge 53, Irvine University 16
Workman 12, Edgewood 6

Intersectional
Castaic 27, SOCES 0
Vistamar 12, St. Mary’s Academy 6

Dodgers right fielder Kyle Tucker has never shied away from just how bad his performance at the plate was for much of his first season in Los Angeles.

For the first five months of the season, when he’d show brief glimpses of progress before sinking back into an extended slump, Tucker’s .683 OPS was the third-worst among Dodgers hitters with at least 100 plate appearances, better than only Hyeseong Kim and Kyle Freeland, who both spent time in triple A.

In September, however, he found a sustainable adjustment. He fixed his bat path, extending through the ball more consistently instead of pulling off of it. He posted a .889 OPS in September, on par with his four straight All-Star seasons before signing with the Dodgers.

Now, all of a sudden, he looks like a potential difference-maker in the postseason.

“The last month or so is more or less what I expect out of myself,” Tucker said in a recent conversation with The Times. “The biggest thing is we have an opportunity now being in the playoffs to win another World Series. Once the playoffs start, you can forget about any stats or personal numbers. The only one that really matters is the win column. So that’s just what I’m gonna try and contribute towards.”

The Dodgers offense had a lot of success stories like Tucker’s in the final month of the regular season. He helped carry the offense, along with Teoscar Hernández and Mookie Betts, who turned around their seasons down the stretch, and Will Smith, who returned from the IL and quickly found his home run swing.

The Dodgers’ starting rotation is their biggest strength going into the postseason. But the offense’s performance against elite pitching, and the bullpen’s execution in tight games, could make or break a series.

Here’s how some other key players are trending going into the postseason:

Designated hitter Shohei Ohtani: Fortunate to have the bye

Shohei Ohtani appears on the right track for a successful postseason.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

Ohtani returned from the IL with five games left in the season, and he went five for 21 with one extra-base hit.

All indications from general manager Brandon Gomes and manager Dave Roberts in video conference calls before the Dodgers’ closed workout Tuesday were that Ohtani was feeling good physically.

“I feel confident that you’re going to see the best version of Shohei of the last two months,” Roberts said. “I know that’s sort of a low bar given his injury, but I do think that he’s as healthy as he’s been in quite some time, and every day from the training staff, it keeps getting better. So, number one, he’ll be a threat being in the lineup, but I do think that the performance piece will be what we’re hoping for.”

First baseman Freddie Freeman: Ice cold

Freddie Freeman did not hit well in September.

(Ronaldo Bolaños / Los Angeles Times)

Freeman, who pushed through a bout with tendinitis in his right knee earlier this month, hit just .184 in September and went 0-for-7 in his last two games.

On Tuesday, Freeman said he had no pain in his knee. But finally acknowledged that the injury could have affected his swing mechanics, while again emphasizing that he wouldn’t use that as an excuse.

Freeman has a plan for the bye week that he hopes will set him in the right direction for the playoffs.

“I’m going to hit on the field every day,” he said Sunday. “I already know how my Tuesday is going to go. There’s going to be a lot of blocked balls to left [field], a lot of flares into left. I’m hoping as Tuesday goes Wednesday, I’ll come back and those will be put down a little more. Thursday they’ll be moved over to shortstop and by Friday I will be feeling good. That is how my head is thinking right now.”

Center fielder Andy Pages: Out of the gate running

It was hard to predict how the center fielder would look at the plate when he returned from a fracture in his left hand. He recorded a 1.181 OPS in six games and homered twice in the final regular-season series against the San Francisco Giants.

“He went into last October really scuffling, and it sort of bled into October,” Roberts said over the weekend. “Where, I think right now he feels really confident, swinging the bat well, and the hope is that this one bleeds into October as well.”

Reliever Edgardo Henriquez: Healthy

Henriquez is “trending really well” after throwing live batting practice, Gomes said. If this week continues to go smoothly, the flame-throwing right-hander is expected to be on the NLDS roster.

“Given the body of work, what he’s done, the unique skill set,” Roberts said, “could be huge for us — will be huge for us.”

Reliever Edwin Díaz: Strong finish

Díaz made five appearances after his latest return from the IL (neck). He gave up just one hit in those games, with a 52.9% strikeout rate.

“I don’t know if we could have asked much more out of Edwin,” Gomes said. “Felt like each outing was more and more sharp and looking more like himself. So feel that he’s in a great place right now. Stuff out of hand is as good as it’s been all year. And we know that he has pitched in the hottest of hot games in the past and in any role, especially in the postseason. So he’s looked great, and glad that he’s in the position that he’s in and was able to bounce back after the IL stint.”

NLDS weather: Sweltering

Los Angeles’ weather forecast for this weekend, when the Dodgers are set to host the first two games of the NLDS, shows temperatures reaching the high 90s. The Dodgers are scheduled to play Game 2 at 5 p.m. on Sunday. But Saturday’s game time will depend on the results of the wild-card round. First pitch for Game 1 could be at 1 p.m. or 6 p.m.

Director Na Hong-jin’s action movie “Hope” opened in 1,500 U.S. cinemas this month, marking the biggest domestic theatrical footprint for a Korean-language film since the Academy Award-winning “Parasite.”

That’s a big bet, particularly for a foreign film. But after the success of “Parasite,” the growth of Korean shows such as Netflix’s “Squid Game” on streaming and the broader acceptance of subtitles in film and television, it was a bet Neon was willing to make.

The indie studio snapped up North American and English language rights to “Hope” for an undisclosed price before the film’s world premiere in the spring at the Cannes Film Festival.

Right off the bat, Neon knew the film would be positioned in South Korea as a big action thriller and massive event film for director Na, and wanted to match that.

In the film, which includes Alicia Vikander and Michael Fassbender in its cast, a group of people fight back against a creature that rampages through a Korean village.

“The reality is that just because a movie has subtitles, doesn’t make it an art film or a niche film,” Elissa Federoff, Neon’s chief distribution officer, told me this month. “And this, to us, felt like a big action blockbuster.”

She continued, “To me, it was this movie that certainly cinephiles were going to be curious about. But I also knew that we could cross over to a broader audience if we gave it a shot.”

So far, “Hope” has grossed more than $8 million domestically and $45.6 million worldwide on a reported production budget of at least $45 million.

Neon expected to reach Korean and Korean American audiences with “Hope,” but the film also over-indexed with Latinos, who represented 27% of the audience, according to PostTrak theatrical data.

Such a wide national release is unusual for foreign films, which typically play in specialty theaters on fewer than 100 screens. Though its domestic box office total doesn’t indicate that the film fully crossed over to mainstream audiences, “for a foreign film, it’s very successful” and has done “solid business,” said David A. Gross, who writes the FranchiseRe movie industry newsletter.

Neon, of course, has experience with Korean cinema. It distributed 2019’s “Parasite,” which became the first non-English-language film to win Best Picture. After “Parasite” won the Oscar, it was shown on 2,000 screens, about 17 weeks after its release. The Bong Joon Ho-directed film ended up grossing more than $53 million domestically and brought in more than $263 million worldwide.

The film put Neon on the map in many ways, Federoff said, and also pushed the boundaries for what the industry considered a best picture nominee. Films such as “Parasite” and “Hope” should also expand what studios consider to be mainstream fare.

“Studios and distributors are still boxing things out a little bit and thinking of these as not as accessible or not for a general commercial audience,” Federoff said. “And I would totally disagree with it.”

Though “Hope” is a long way from the domestic box-office success of “Parasite,” these kinds of swings are important to keep the pipeline of original films humming and to vary the types of fare mainstream audiences can see at their local theaters.

Although art house films once skewed toward older audiences, indie films are now popular with younger generations, who have also become accustomed to reading subtitles.

That could bode well for future foreign language films looking to make inroads with mainstream audiences. While giving a wide release to a foreign language film could be seen as risky, it’s a move Federoff believes can help bolster creative filmmaking and keep people engaged at cinemas.

“My hope is that studios start to trust their audience and respect their audiences a little bit more,” she said. “I think we can all do this. I think we can all say that we just have to have more risk taking involved with what we do. There’s a lot of incredible international cinema out there that should be seen by everybody.”

Paramount and the states fight back

Paramount Skydance and the state attorneys general are defending their proposed settlement in the face of skeptical questions from Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), arguing that the judge overseeing the case should approve the agreement without the deeper review the senator has requested.

On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín told both sides to answer Booker’s questions before she ruled on whether to approve the proposed consent decree. She said at the time that she would issue a ruling “in due course.”

On Monday, both sides issued separate filings that argued the terms of the settlement were adequate. In particular, the states pushed back on assertions that the consent decree was too weak, saying it “reflects a reasonable compromise that addresses the competitive issues posed by the proposed merger in the markets alleged in the complaint.”

“The decree’s enforcement provisions have teeth,” the states wrote in their filing.

Stuff We Wrote

Film shoots

Number of the week

A bipartisan group of lawmakers formally introduced a bill last week to create a federal film and television tax credit.

The proposed legislation would provide a 20% credit on above-the-line and below-the-line U.S. labor costs for eligible productions, including postproduction and visual effects work — two industries that have increasingly moved overseas.

The uncapped credit could increase to 30% with several uplifts, including for independent productions or filming in a federally declared disaster area, such as Los Angeles County.

What I’m watching

It’s fall, which means I’m all in on “Dancing with the Stars,” as I have been since Season 2, when Drew Lachey won with pro partner Cheryl Burke back in 2006.

This season feels like it was made for millennials like me, with contestants such as Julia Stiles, Harry Shum Jr. and Jenna Dewan. But my favorite dance last week was actually Guillermo Rodriguez’s paso doble.

It’s relatively easy to find USC and UCLA fans in Southern California, but where can proud Georgia, Michigan, Florida or Alabama fans go to watch games in the Los Angeles area with like-minded sports expats?

Look no further than the Los Angeles Times’ ultimate SoCal college football sports bar guide.

If you’re an alum or fan of teams from the Power Four conferences — the ACC and ally Notre Dame, Big Ten, Big 12 and SEC — this guide will lead you to your tribe. No longer will you be the only person cheering and clapping at the bar when Oklahoma scores a touchdown or walk into a bar wearing Michigan blue and only seeing others decked out in Ohio State gear.

Find your home away from home on game day.

Scroll down or filter through location to find where fan bases for most Power 4 schools hang out during the game.

Hi, and welcome to another edition of Prep Rally. I’m Eric Sondheimer. League play begins this week in high school football for the best of the best. That means get ready for some great matchups in the Trinity League, the Mission League, the Alpha League, the Marine League and many others.

League play begins

Coach Carson Palmer of Santa Margarita will try to help his team win a Trinity League title.

(Craig Weston)

St. John Bosco’s Koa Malau’ulu looks to pass while pressured against Bishop Gorman.

(Ian Maule/ LA Times)

It’s time for a dose of reality. Lots of teams are off to great starts with nonleague schedules designed to get them enough early wins to be able to get an at-large playoff berth in case they stumble in league play.

League play begins, so some of the unbeaten teams are about to be no longer unbeaten.

Santa Margarita was the best team in the state in 2025, but the Eagles didn’t win the Trinity League. St. John Bosco was the champion, and with league play beginning Friday, both schools have ambitions to finish on top.

Santa Margarita (5-0) plays Mater De (3-2) in its opener at Saddleback College and St. John Bosco (4-1) hosts JSerra (4-1). The other league game is Servite (3-2) facing Orange Lutheran (3-2) at Orange Coast College.

What’s different this season is that any of the six Trinity teams look capable of winning on a given night. But some of the teams are about to be strengthened by the addition of sit-out period transfer students that become eligible effective Monday.

The Mission League is all about which team will finish second to unbeaten Sierra Canyon (5-0). A good Friday opener has Chaminade (5-0) hosting Sherman Oaks Notre Dame (5-0).

The new Alpha League will feature weekly battles with Mission Viejo, San Clemente, Edison, Yorba Linda, Los Alamitos and San Juan Hills. The likely title decider on Oct. 16 has Mission Viejo at San Clemente.

Harvard-Westlake has started 5-0, but the Wolverines receive their first major test with a Del Rey League opener against Salesian on Friday.

In the City Section, Birmingham, which has won every West Valley League title since 2018, faces unbeaten Cleveland on Friday at home in a West Valley League opener. San Pedro and Banning have their annual Marine League rivalry game Friday at Banning.

Marshall takes a 5-0 record into the start of Northern League play at Franklin.

Freedom day arrives

It’s freedom day on Monday for Southern Section football players who have been sitting out the first half of the season after transferring without moving.

St. John Bosco can’t wait to insert offensive tackle Elisha Mueller, a transfer from Servite and one of the top prospects from the Class of 2028. Also becoming available is sophomore defensive back Kingston Fatu, a transfer from Tustin who will help a secondary that has been struggling in trying to deny big plays.

Santa Margarita adds 6-foot-3, 285-pound sophomore transfer Karras Vandermade, a defensive lineman. Servite has six players who could compete for major roles, with four on defense that will add much needed depth. Orange Lutheran gains 6-5 tight end Hudson Ploog and linebacker Jamaal Fay, who started for two years at Leuzinger. JSerra adds 6-7, 315-pound offensive lineman Wyatt Martin.

Other schools are also about to be strengthened. Unbeaten Sierra Canyon adds physical wingback/linebacker Fletcher Thomas. Unbeaten Chaminade, hoping to challenge the Trailblazers in the Mission League, picks up sophomore receiver Champ Ross and junior cornerback Jayden Woods.

Long Beach Poly fans will get their first look at Mater Dei transfer Trevor Scott, a sophomore quarterback. Quarterback Daniel Mielke becomes eligible at Chino Hills. Corona Centennial gains Brody Black, an offensive lineman from Servite. San Clemente picks up receiver Titus King, a speedster from Santa Margarita. Amir Morton, a junior running back who transferred from Sierra Canyon, is expected to provide immediate help for Crespi.

Cornerback Tadd Mitchell, a Montana commit, joins Oxnard Pacifica along with lineman Miguel Macias Santiago.

Matix Frithsmith demonstrated his versatility in Hart’s 34-17 Foothill League win over Saugus. He rushed for 218 yards and four touchdowns, including a 91-yard run. Here’s the report.

Corona Centennial traveled to Northern California to take on De La Salle and what a game it was. De La Salle won 35-32 behind Duece Jones-Drew, who rushed for 211 yards. Here’s the report.

Centennial has lost three close games to Santa Margarita, Mater Dei and De La Salle. As soon the Huskies get back to full strength with the return of standout safety/kicker Jaden Walk-Green and others, beware.

Cleveland High running back Moyosoreoluwa Odebunmi gives the thumbs-up after the Cavaliers defeated Crenshaw on the road.

(Joel Beers / For The Times)

Cleveland pulled off the upset of the week in going on the road to improve to 5-0 and beat Crenshaw. Here’s the report.

Also here’s a look at how 34-year-old Cleveland head coach Mario Guzman came up with one of the biggest wins in school history.

Here’s this week’s top 25 rankings by The TImes.

Here’s top individual performances from the past week.

Here’s the the Week 6 schedule.

Midseason report

Receiver Andrew Cordero (left) and quarterback Jeremy Mellalieu have led Chaminade to a 5-0 start.

(Eric Sondheimer / Los Angeles Times)

It’s midseason in high school football, so it’s a good time to check who has lived up to expectations or come out of nowhere to be a major contributor.

Here’s a look.

Is CIF powerless?

When a coach takes his team out of state and plays two players who are listed on the Southern Section transfer portal as not being cleared to play and are also missing from the team’s MaxPreps roster to possibly prevent others from knowing who’s playing, is a two-game coach suspension adequate punishment?

That’s the scenario involving Inglewood football coach Mil’von James, who missed two games after the Southern Section alerted the school that James played two ineligible players during a game in Texas last month. Since Inglewood lost, forcing the school to forfeit was moot. James returned to coaching the team on Friday and told the Daily Breeze that it was an “administrative decision” for him to sit out two games.

The Southern Section has no power to discipline James, but schools and districts are expected to impose appropriate punishment for violating CIF rules.

Here’s a look at what’s at stake.

Oxnard quarterback Ryanna Harris has scored 33 touchdowns and thrown for 13 more in 16 games.

(Steve Galluzzo / For The Times)

JSerra is 19-0 with few teams being able to give the Lions much competition these days.

Here’s a look at this week’s top 10 flag football rankings by The Times.

Huntington Beach won its own tournament championship.

Los Angeles Wilson is off to a 9-1 start and could be the favorite in the City Section. Wilson at defending City Section Open Division champion Marshall on Monday is a big Northern League opener.

Carson is 8-3 and has handed the only loss to Wilson.

Girls golf

Santa Margarita keeps producing low scores in girls golf.

The defending Southern Section Division 1 champions are stronger than ever. The team is 6-0 and 3-0 in the Trinity League.

All-female officiating crew

An all-female officiating crew for Orange County game on Thursday: Kristi Wilson (left, head linesman), Sarita Stamps (back judge), Mary Margaret Montgomery (referee), MaryAnne Menlove (umpire), Nina Berbiglia (line judge).

(Orange County Officials Assn.)

An all-female officiating crew is set to become a first for the Orange County Football Officials Assn. when they work a Thursday game between La Quinta and Garden Grove Santiago on Thursday night at Garden Grove High.

Notes . . .

There’s trouble brewing at Van Nuys High, where the baseball coach has been removed for building an unauthorized batting cage during the summer. Also the softball field had a protective fence demolished earlier this week that was a safety measure to protect fans and dugouts could be next demolished. Here’s the report.

Here’s the latest Southern Section girls volleyball rankings….

El Camino Real’s boys’ soccer team, going for a third straight City Section championship, has three players committed to Cal State Northridge. Here’s the report….

In girls’ tennis, Corona del Mar defeated Portola in a rematch of last year’s Division 1 final. Here’s a report….

Orange Lutheran baseball player Evan Dugdale has committed to Oklahoma….

Junior catcher Jordan Lindsay of Birmingham has committed to Wake Forrest….

Junior pitcher Eli Martinez of Aquinas has committed to UC Santa Barbara….

Jaylen Maroney of Edison has committed to Sacramento State for women’s soccer….

Junior pitcher Julian Pardinas of La Mirada has committed to UCLA….

Junior pitcher Jayden Singer of Calabasas has committed to USC….

Junior outfielder/pitcher Noah Esquival of South Hills has committed to St. Mary’s….

Left-handed pitcher Charlie Hoye of Palos Verdes has committed to Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo….

Standout guard Davey Smith from Windward has committed to San Diego State….

Shooting guard Jeremiah Profit from Rancho Christian has committed to Northwestern….

Junior softball player Bailey Holder from Long Beach Poly has committed to Washington….

Junior slapper Makayla Encinas of Chino Hills has committed to UCLA….

Devon Richardson is the new basketball coach at Sun Valley Poly, replacing Joe Wyatt, who’s now the coach at North Hollywood. He was an assistant coach at L.A. Valley College and former head coach at Blair….

Joe Heinz, the commissioner of the CIF San Diego Section, has died. He was 56….

The Southern Section has announced its playoff schedule for fall sports. Here’s the link.…

Southern Section schools are required to pick a 14-day dead period each summer that all their sports teams have to follow. Now there’s a proposal to allow basketball players participate in CIF-approved recruiting events known as Section 7 and CaliLive. It will be voted on next year by the Southern Section Council….

Sophomore quarterback Marcus Washington of Cajon has committed to Kentucky….

Offensive lineman Kaden Franco of St. John Bosco has committed to Brown….

From the archives: Vernon Adams

Eastern Washington quarterback Vernon Adams Jr. in 2014.

(Elaine Thompson / Associated Press)

After being a star quarterback at Bishop Alemany, Vernon Adams went on to play quarterback at Eastern Washington and Oregon and has made a strong career in the Canadian Football League. They season playing for the Calgary Stampeders, he has passed for 3,261 yards and 27 touchdowns.

He’s 33 and has been playing in Canada since 2016.

Here’s a story from 2010 about his talent against Crespi.

Here’s a story from 2014 when he was putting up big numbers for Eastern Washington.

Recommendations

From Frontofficesports, a story on how private equity can be helpful for youth sports.

From San Gabriel Valley Tribune, a story looking at USC-bound Gavin Williams of Damien.

From The Times, a look at Orange junior quarterback Star Thomas III.

Tweets you might have missed

Until next time….

Have a question, comment or something you’d like to see in a future Prep Rally newsletter? Email me at eric.sondheimer@latimes.com, and follow me on Twitter at @latsondheimer.

Did you get this newsletter forwarded to you? To sign up and get it in your inbox, click here.

Today marks the end of an era. Mark Swed — the last full-time classical music critic at a major American newspaper — has retired. On Thursday, members of The Times editorial staff gathered to celebrate Swed, but the mood was somewhat somber. Although we were glad for our beloved colleague, this was not a happy milestone for journalism — or classical music.

Swed is the rarest of writers: a critic with deep empathy and encyclopedic knowledge who can turn the sonic details of an orchestra playing Mahler’s Seventh Symphony into an epic journey for readers. At a time when orchestra leaders struggle to find new audiences for the art form, Swed’s writing did the job for them.

And in an era when everybody is an expert on TikTok, Swed’s informed criticism was a life raft in a sea of slop. He told us why the music mattered — in its historical context, as it related to the modern landscape, and what it meant to him personally. He made us better listeners, and most importantly, he made us curious. After reading his take, we wanted to run out to a concert, an opera or a new music festival.

That this particular kind of writing — and of seeing and explaining the world to readers — is going away with Swed, is truly a tragedy. Thankfully he is leaving of his own accord, and will hopefully continue to write a monthly column, but his loss still stings.

Like many, I watched with sorrow in February as the Washington Post slashed its staff, including its classical music critic, Michael Andor Brodeur. That blow came a little less than a year after the New York Times shook up its culture desk and reassigned its classical music critic, Zachary Woolfe, to serve as the obituaries editor. (The paper is now actively searching for a new classical music critic.)

A number of staffers spoke at Swed’s retirement lunch, and deputy A1 editor John Penner was among them. In his touching speech, Penner noted that Swed was the last of his kind, adding, “with no full-time critic writing anywhere in any newspaper about classical music, American journalism will be poorer, and its readers less informed, inspired and enlightened.”

Penner continued, saying what all of us gathered in that conference room knew to be true, “Mark’s 30 years at The Times coincided with this city’s Golden Age of classical music — the era of Salonen and Dudamel and Disney Hall. L.A. has been the most important and exciting music capital in the country, if not the world. (Why else would New York be stealing Gustavo from us now?) And central to that excitement and importance has been Mark’s writing and criticism. For my money, even when there were many music critics writing for many publications, Mark set the standard for classical music criticism, while opening our ears to new and under-appreciated music.”

Hear, hear.

I’m Arts editor Jessica Gelt wishing Swed a happy retirement and humbly asking him to come back to us now and again. This is your arts and culture news for the week.

The week ahead: A curated calendar

FRIDAY

Demand To Be Heard Festival
The Sunflower Project presents a celebration centering the voices of survivors of abuse beginning with a screening of the film “Break The Silence: The Gabby Petito Story,” followed by a panel discussion with the Gabby Petito Foundation. Saturday and Sunday is the Resident Artist Showcase, featuring the work of six survivor/artists. Also Saturday are three three arts workshops focusing on music, candle making and body movement, respectively.
Film screening, 6 p.m. Friday; 6:30 p.m. Saturday-Sunday, Resident Artist Showcase. Wisteria Theater, 7061 Vineland Ave., North Hollywood. Arts workshops, 11:30 a.m., 1 and 2:30 p.m. Art Share L.A. 801 East 4th Place, downtown L.A. towardsthesun.org

Jonah Elijah: Ambiguously Free
The first U.S. museum solo exhibition by the L.A.-based contemporary painter and mixed-media artist features work that blends personal memories with broader mythologies, religion and history to explore Black culture.
On view through December 16. Xela Institute of Art, 2176 Pacific Avenue, Long Beach. xela.art

Joshua Redman Quartet: Words Fall Short
The saxophonist performs a new program of music with his ensemble — pianist Paul Cornish, bassist Philip Norris and drummer Nazir Ebo, plus special guest Skylar Tang, an up-and-coming Bay Area-born trumpeter and composer.
7:30 p.m. The Wallis, 9390 N. Santa Monica Blvd., Beverly Hills. thewallis.org

Melrose Gallery Walk
Gallery spaces, including Hostler Burrows, Lawson-Fenning, Meg Turner, Object, Seventh House, The Window and 22RE, open their doors to celebrate the local design community. Free and open to the public.
5-8 p.m. Hostler Burrows, 6819 Melrose Ave. hostlerburrows.com

SATURDAY

Midterms: This Will Hurt Someone
Brightwork newmusic performs a program of contemporary works inspired by civic life and social change, including Ted Hearne’s “Bye Bye Huey,” Natalie Dietterich’s “Philosophy of Furniture,” Ian Dicke’s “Get Rich Quick” (with video), Matt Marks’ “This Will Hurt Someone,” Hesam Abedini’s “What Remains” and “Frederic Rzewsk’s “Coming Together” (with video).
8 p.m. Sierra Madre Playhouse, 87 W. Sierra Madre Blvd. sierramadreplayhouse.org

Aperghis Trilogy
Long Beach Opera performs three works by experimental composer Georges Aperghis: “Le corps à corps”,” Les Sept Crimes de l’amour,” “Récitations.” Directed by James Darrah Black. Christopher Rountree conducts.
7:30 p.m. The Queen Mary, 1126 Queen’s Way, Long Beach. longbeachopera.org

The Horror Show
An immersive deep dive into the movie genre presented in six themed galleries: Gothic, Psychological, Science, Slasher, Religion and Ghosts, with behind-the-scenes looks at a range of titles that includes everything from Oscar winners to drive-in classics. But first, you must pass through “The Hallway,” bwahahaha.
10 a.m.–6 p.m. Wednesday–Monday, on view through July 25, 2027. Academy Museum, 6067 Wilshire Blvd. academymuseum.org

Senon Williams: here now, now gone, gone here
A solo exhibition of the artist’s work, in which he collects materials such as nails, slips of paper, fragments of language and industrial remnants, then uses assemblage to rearrange them and discover deeper meaning.
Noon-6 p.m. Tuesday-Friday, on view through Nov. 15. The Philosophical Research Society, 3910 Los Feliz Blvd. prs.org

Promised Lands: California’s Unratified Treaties and Native Resilience
Archival materials, contemporary objects, images and voices from local tribal communities relate the complex history of the state with its indigenous people.
10 a.m.-4 p.m. Tuesday-Friday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday-Sunday. Autry Museum of the American West, 4700 Western Heritage Way, Griffith Park. theautry.org

Rodgers & Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music Sing-A-Long
Actor and comedian Melissa Peterman hosts the annual screening of the 1965 Oscar winner for best picture complete with a costume contest and more than a few of your favorite songs.
7:30 p.m. Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N Highland Ave. hollywoodbowl.com

Daymé Arocena’s Alkemi
The Grammy nominee and Juno Award–winner blends Afro-Cuban beats with neo-soul, jazz and contemporary Latin pop.
7:30 p.m. The Wallis, 9390 N. Santa Monica Blvd., Beverly Hills. thewallis.org

San Pedro Festival of the Arts
The 20th annual event, presented by Los Angeles Choreographers & Dancers, features 20 dance companies demonstrating a variety of styles and cultural traditions.
1-4:30 p.m. Peck Park, Upper Green near the Community Center, 560 N. Western Ave. triartsp.com

Tokio Ueyama: The Hollows Between Mountains
The first museum exhibition in California of the Little Tokyo-based Japanese artist (1889–1954) features his drawings, prints, photographs and paintings as well as artists he was associated with, including Diego Rivera, Tōyō Miyatake, Edward Weston and Henrietta Shore.
11 a.m.-6 p.m. Wednesday–Sunday, on view through Feb. 28, 2027. UC Irvine Langson Orange County Museum of Art, 3333 Avenue of the Arts, Costa Mesa. langson.uci.edu

SUNDAY

Grant Gershon conducts the Los Angeles Master Chorale at Walt Disney Hall, Nov. 16, 2025.

(David Butow/For the Times)

Brahms’ Requiem
The Los Angeles Master Chorale, led by Grant Gershon, opens its silver anniversary season with a program that also includes Bruckner’s “Te Deum.”
7:30 p.m. Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. lamasterchorale.org

WEDNESDAY

Rubén Blades & Roberto Delgado Big Band: Fotografías Tour
The Panamanian salsa greats perform classic Afro-Cuban music flavored with rock, jazz and Latin American influences. Silvana Estrada opens.
8 p.m. Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N Highland Ave. hollywoodbowl.com

Menopause The Musical: 25th Anniversary Tour
Four women at a lingerie sale share their experiences with “the change” through parody songs of pop hits.
7:30 p.m. Bank of America Performing Arts Center, 2100 E. Thousand Oaks Blvd., Thousand Oaks. bapacthousandoaks.com

The Broadway production of “The Outsiders.”

(Matthew Murphy)

The Outsiders
The Tony Award-winning musical adaptation of S.E. Hinton’s coming-of age-novel set in 1960s Tulsa arrives with Ponyboy Curtis and his fellow greasers facing off against the upper-class Socs.
Through Oct. 18. Hollywood Pantages Theatre, 6233 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood. Oct. 20-Nov. 1. Segerstrom Center for the Arts, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. tour.outsidersmusical.com

THURSDAY

Laura Benanti: Nobody Cares
The Broadway star sings original songs and shares stories with her trademark wit in this one-woman show. Directed by Annie Tippe.
7:30 p.m. Thursday-Saturday. 2 p.m. Saturday-Sunday. The Wallis, 9390 N. Santa Monica Blvd., Beverly Hills. thewallis.org

The Dance and the Railroad
Asian American theater collective Artists at Play and Latino Theater Company team up for a rare revival of an early David Henry Hwang play set during the 1867 Chinese railroad workers’ strike. Directed by Katherine Chou.
Previews, 8 p.m. Thursday and Oct. 2. 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays, through Nov. 1. Los Angeles Theatre Center, 514 S. Spring Street, downtown L.A. latinotheaterco.org

Mahler’s Symphony No. 2: Resurrection
Alexander Shelley conducts the Pacific Symphony with soprano Miah Persson, mezzo-soprano Dame Sarah Connolly and the Pacific Chorale.
8 p.m. Thursday-Oct. 2. Segerstrom Center for the Arts, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. pacificsymphony.org

The SoCal scene

Gov. Gavin Newsom mingles with guests at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art opening party.

(Carlin Stiehl/For The Times)

I spent my Saturday night at the Lucas Museum opening party where I got to stand in the lobby by the nifty elevators watching Gov. Gavin Newsom talk to Kim Kardashian. Later, I went to Skywalker Grill and saw U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi sitting at a table next to Leonardo DiCaprio and his entourage. It would be an understatement to say that the night was both bizarre and memorable.

Times theater critic Charles McNulty (the paper’s only remaining arts critic) has kept exceptionally busy this fall season. Late last week he wrote a review of “The Ford/Hill Project” At REDCAT, which transforms Senate testimony from Anita Hill and Christine Blasey Ford into a docu-play that explores the details of two of history’s most consequential Supreme Court confirmation hearings. “The restraint imposed by the production adds to its power. There’s no need to editorialize. The proceedings skewer themselves,” McNulty writes.

Huguette Caland in Stone Doorway, France, 1970.

(Huguette Caland Estate)

McNulty also drove to San Diego to see the Old Globe’s world-premiere musical adaptation of John Carney’s “Begin Again,” which explores the stories of two music-industry vets who embark on a grassroots recording project. The show features a score by rocker Pat Monahan and Train. “‘Heartwarming’ is a cliche of theater reviewing that I have studiously tried to avoid, but I’m tempted to use the word in my review of ‘Begin Again’,” McNulty writes.

McNulty penned one of his harshest reviews since last year’s take down of “Hamlet” after he went to Atwater Village Theatre to see Echo Theater Company’s world premiere production of “The Peterson Show,” by Janine Nabers. “Unfortunately, the production is hamstrung by fundamental problems in the writing, directing and acting, all pointing to a failure of control. Control of the story, control of the tone and control of the cast,” McNulty wrote of the show, which is about the impact of disgraced Bill Cosby-like star on his TV family.

Meanwhile contributor Tara Anne Dalbow wrote a beautiful story about the late, great artist Huguette Caland in advance of the largest U.S. retrospective of her work, opening Sunday at the Hammer Museum.

Ernest “Ernie” Wolfe III, owner of an eponymous gallery on Sawtelle, is dying of a traumatic brain injury and his family is looking for homes for his 15,000 pieces of African Art. Contributor Jane Horowitz writes about Wolfe‘s legacy and the (sometimes controversial) origins of his collection.

I got the scoop that the Museum of Contemporary Art has appointed Jonathan Abbott as its new director and chief executive. Abbott replaces interim director Ann Goldstein, who stepped in last July after the unexpected departure of Johanna Burton. Abbott, who begins work immediately, joins the museum as its sixth director since 2008. He formerly served for 15 years as president and chief executive of the PBS-affiliated public broadcasting station GBH in Boston.

Mary Cassatt, “Summertime,” 1894-95

(Sotheby’s / Armand Hammer Collection)

As one chapter closes with Swed’s retirement, a new one begins as we welcome our new entertainment and arts reporter, Laura Zornosa, who hit the ground running by writing three great arts stories: The first is about the private art collection of Armand Hammer (including Mary Cassatt’s “Summertime,”) coming up for auction at Sotheby’s; the second, covering opening day at the Lucas Museum where Zornosa interviewed guests on their thoughts about the place; and the third is a fun news brief about how Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra commissioned fanfares from half a dozen film composers, including John Williams and Ludwig Göransson, curated by “none other than Seth MacFarlane (best known as the creator and star of “Family Guy”).”

Culture news

Coy Middlebrook has been named the new artistic director of the Wallis.

(Jeff Lorch / The Wallis)

The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts announced the appointment of longtime creative staffer Coy Middlebrook as its new artistic director. “Coy brings an extraordinary depth of knowledge about The Wallis and its audiences, along with deep relationships throughout the performing arts nationally and internationally. He understands both the artistic possibilities of this
institution and the importance of its relationship to our community. I am excited to work with him as we build a future that is artistically ambitious, deeply connected and open to everyone,” said Wallis Executive Director and Chief Executive, Jean Davidson, in a news release.

Meanwhile Theatre Commons LA (TCLA), the nonprofit organization created and launched a year ago as part of a concerted effort by some of the city’s most prominent theater leaders to unify the city’s sprawling theater scene, has announced its first Executive Director, David E. Shane. Shane previously served as director of program services at the Alliance of Resident Theatres/New York where, according to a news release, “he set the strategic vision and goals for a robust suite of programs serving over 450 of New York’s nonprofit theaters.” He is tasked with doing the same thing in L.A. and we wish him the best of luck.

— Jessica Gelt

And last but not least

The Getty Museum has acquired the recently rediscovered 17th-century painting “Portrait of the Count-Duke of Olivares” by Spanish artist Diego Velázquez (1599-1660). It will be displayed in the museum’s East Pavilion this fall. According to ArtNews, “The acquisition means a Velázquez painting will for the first time be represented in the collection of a West Coast museum.”

(Games at 7 p.m. unless noted)

THURSDAY’S SCHEDULE

CITY SECTION

Valley Mission League

Canoga Park at Reseda

SOUTHERN SECTION

Big West League

Corona Centennial at Vista Murrieta

Great Oak at Eastvale Roosevelt

Murrieta Valley at Chaparral

Temecula Valley at Corona Santiago

Cottonwood League

Vasquez at Webb

Delta League

Dana Hills at Western

Laguna Beach at Troy

Foothill League

Hart vs. Golden Valley at Canyon Country Canyon

Foxtrot League

El Toro at Beckman

Golden League

Littlerock at Lancaster

Inland Valley League

Arlington at Citrus Hill

Kappa League

St. Margaret’s at Anaheim Canyon

Lambda League

Santa Ana Calvary Chapel at Woodbridge

Westminster at Placentia Valencia

Miramonte League

Bassett at Garey

Workman at Pomona

Mojave River League

Serrano at Oak Hills

Mountain Pass League

San Jacinto at Temescal Canyon

Mountain Valley League

Rubidoux at San Bernardino

Omicron League

Estancia at Buena Park

Pioneer League

West Torrance at North Torrance

River Valley League

Miller at Ramona

Sierra League

Colony at Bonita

Glendora at Northview

Charter Oak at Ayala

South Valley League

San Jacinto Valley Academy at Temecula Prep

Skyline League

Bloomington at Carter

Fontana at Arroyo Valley

Indian Springs at San Gorgonio

Tango League

Loara at Century

Magnolia at Bolsa Grande

Santa Ana Valley at Savanna, 6:30 p.m.

Westminster La Quinta at Garden Grove Santiago

Nonleague

Maranatha at Santa Rosa Academy

South El Monte at El Rancho

Whittier at Lynwood

INTERSECTIONAL

King/Drew at Santa Fe Christian, 4 p.m.

8-MAN

CITY SECTION

Valley League

East Valley at South LA College Prep

SOUTHERN SECTION

Noneague

Desert at Milken

FRIDAY’S SCHEDULE

CITY SECTION

Central League

Bernstein at Contreras

Hollywood at Roybal

Coliseum League

Dorsey at Washington Prep

Marquez at Crenshaw

Eastern League

Bell at Garfield

Legacy at Los Angeles Roosevelt

South East at Huntington Park

East Valley League

Fulton at Grant

North Hollywood at Arleta, 3:30 p.m.

Monroe at Verdugo Hills

Exposition League

Santee at Manual Arts

Marine League

Gardena at Carson

San Pedro at Wilmington Banning

Metro league

Locke at Los Angeles Jordan

Northern League

Eagle Rock at Lincoln

Los Angeles Marshall at Franklin

Valley Mission League

Granada Hills Kennedy at Panorama

Van Nuys at Sylmar

Western League

Fairfax at Westchester

Los Angeles University at Los Angeles Hamilton

Venice at Palisades

West Valley League

Chatsworth at Taft, 7:15 p.m.

Cleveland at Birmingham

Granada Hills at El Camino Real

Nonleague

Belmont at Diego Rivera

Dymally at Rancho Dominguez

Hawkins at West Adams, 4 p.m.

Jefferson at Fremont

Maywood CES at Mendez

Sotomayor at USC Hybrid, 3 p.m.

Torres at Los Angeles, 3:30 p.m.

SOUTHERN SECTION

Alpha League

Edison at Mission Viejo

Los Alamitos at San Juan Hills

Yorba Linda at San Clemente

Angelus League

St. Francis at Cathedral

St. Paul at Paraclete

St. Pius X-St. Matthias Academy at Bishop Montgomery

Baseline League

Chino Hills at Damien

Upland at Etiwanda

Bay League

Leuzinger at Redondo Union

Mira Costa at Inglewood

Big West

Murrieta Mesa at Norco

Riverside King at Corona

Boulder League

Gabrielino at Pasadena

San Marino at Crescenta Valley

South Pasadena at Burbank Burroughs

Bravo League

Corona del Mar at Villa Park

Crean Lutheran at Tustin

La Habra at Capistrano Valley

Camino Real League

Cantwell-Sacred Heart at Bosco Tech

Mary Star of the Sea at St. Monica

Channel League

Moorpark at Santa Barbara

Ventura at Thousand Oaks

Westlake at Rio Mesa

Citrus Belt League

Cajon at Citrus Valley

Redlands at Yucaipa

Redlands East Valley at Beaumont

Citrus Coast League

Carpinteria at Channel Islands

Grace and Santa Clara

Nordhoff at Del Sol

Coastal 101 League

Agoura at Buena

Calabasas at Oak Park

Oxnard at Camarillo

Cottonwood League

Riverside Prep at Arrowhead Christian

Riverside Notre Dame at Whittier Christian

Del Rey League

Alemany at St. Anthony

Harvard-Westlake at Salesian

La Salle at Crespi

Delta League

El Modena at Huntington Beach

Desert Empire League

La Quinta at Shadow Hills

Palm Desert at Rancho Mirage

Palm Springs at Xavier Prep

Desert Sky League

Granite Hills at Adelanto

Victor Valley at Barstow

Epsilon League

Brea Olinda at Trabuco Hills

Santa Ana Foothill at Newport Harbor

Tesoro at Aliso Niguel

Foothill League

Castaic at Canyon Country Canyon

Valencia vs. Saugus at College of the Canyons

Foxtrot League

Irvine at Segerstrom

Orange at El Dorado

Gano League

Chaffey at Walnut

Montclair at Nogales

Rowland at Don Lugo

Gateway League

Cerritos at La Mirada

La Serna at Warren

Mayfair at Downey

Golden League

Antelope Valley at Highland

Palmdale at Eastside

Quartz Hill at Knight

Hacienda League

Baldwin Park at Diamond Bar

Covina at South Hills

West Covina at Los Altos

Hub City League

Compton Early College at Compton Centennial

Dominguez at Compton

Inland Valley League

Heritage at Canyon Springs

Lakeside at Hemet

Iota League

Cypress at Garden Grove Pacifica

Laguna Hills at La Palma Kennedy

Northwood at Marina

Ironwood League

Cerritos Valley Christian at Capistrano Valley Christian

Village Christian at Heritage Christian

Western Christian at Aquinas

Ivy League

Rancho Verde at Rancho Christian

Riverside Poly at Orange Vista

Vista del Lago at Liberty

Kappa League

Esperanza at Fullerton

Portola at Sunny Hills

Lambda League

Fountain Valley at Sonora

Manzanita League

Nuview Bridge at Desert Chapel

Marmonte League

Bishop Diego at Newbury Park

Oaks Christian at Oxnard Pacifica

Simi Valley at St. Bonaventure

Mesquite League

Ontario Christian at Desert Christian Academy

Mid-Cities League

Bellflowet at Santa Fe

Norwalk at California

Paramount at Gahr

Mission League

Bishop Amat at Gardena Serra

Loyola at Sierra Canyon

Sherman Oaks Notre Dame at Chaminade

Mojave River League

Hesperia at Apple Valley

Sultana at Ridgecrest Burroughs

Montview League

Duarte at Ontario

Hacienda Heights Wilson at Sierra Vista

La Puente at Azusa

Moore League

Lakewood at Long Beach Poly

Long Beach Wilson at Long Beach Jordan

Mountain Pass League

West Valley at Tahquitz

Mountain Valley League

La Sierra at Jurupa Valley

Ocean League

Beverly Hills at Lawndale

Peninsula at Hawthorne

Omicron League

Los Amigos at Garden Grove

Santa Ana at Irvine University

Pioneer League

Culver City at El Segundo

Torrance at Santa Monica

River Valley League

Big Bear at Pacific

Norte Vista at Patriot

Sigma League

Anaheim at Katella

Ocean View at Costa Mesa

Rancho Alamitos at Saddleback

605 League

Glenn at Firebaugh

Pioneer at Artesia

Sunbelt League

Hillcrest at Moreno Valley

Perris at Paloma Valley

Riverside North at Valley View

Tri-County League

Dos Pueblos at Hueneme

Fillmore at San Marcos

Santa Paula at Royal

Trinity League

JSerra at St. John Bosco

Mater Dei vs. Santa Margarita at Saddleback College

Servite vs. Orange Lutheran at Orange Coast College

Valle Vista League

Diamond Ranch at Claremont

Los Osos at Chino

San Dimas at Alta Loma

Nonleague

Arroyo at Arcadia

California Military Institute at Silver Valley

Cathedral City at Yucca Valley

Desert Hot Springs at Indio

Millikan at Palos Verdes

Monrovia at Kaiser

Rialto at Bell Gardens

Rosemead at Alhambra

San Gabriel at Mountain View

Schurr at La Canada

St. Genevieve at Brentwood

St. Jeanne de Lestonnac at Rim of the World

INTERSECTIONAL

Angelou at Keppel

Brawley at Linfield Christian

Coachella Valley at Southwest EC

Desert Mirage at Calipatria

Sunnyvale King’s Academy at Rio Hondo Prep

Rosamond vs. Viewpoint at Calabasas

8-MAN

CITY SECTION

City League

Stella at New Designs University Park

Valley League

East Valley at South LA College Prep

Sherman Oaks CES at TEACH Tech

SOUTHERN SECTION

Express League

Downey Calvary Chapel at Magnolia Science Academy

Frontier League

Laguna Blanca at Thousand Oaks Hillcrest Christian

Heritage League

Santa Clarita Christian at Faith Baptist, 4 p.m.

Majestic League

United Christian Academy at Calvary Baptist

Nonleague

Avalon at Vista Meridian

California School for the Deaf Riverside at Hesperia Christian

Trinity Classical Academy at Chadwick, 3:45 p.m.

INTERSECTIONAL

Entrepreneur at Bakersfield Valley Oaks Charter

Maricopa at Laton

SATURDAY’S SCHEDULE

8-MAN

SOUTHERN SECTION

Nonleague

California Lutheran at ACE, 5 p.m.

Flintridge Prep at Thacher, 2 p.m.

INTERSECTIONAL

Orcutt Academy at Cate, 2 p.m.

Maiara Niehues scored in the 88th minute for visiting Angel City in a 1-0 win Saturday that sent the Washington Spirit a third straight loss.

Carina Lageyre found Niehues at the top of the penalty area with two minutes remaining in regulation.

Both Spirit goalkeeper Sandy MacIver and Angel City goalkeeper Angelina Anderson made just two saves.

Angel City improved to 12-8-6.

The Spirit fell to 14-8-4.

SEATTLE — Taylor Ward put Seattle ahead with a pinch-hit two-run single in the seventh inning, J.P Crawford followed with a two-run homer and the Mariners beat the Angels 8-4 on Saturday night.

Mariners left-hander Kade Anderson threw 3⅓ scoreless innings but left in the fourth after taking a 104-mph line drive to the left arm hit by Christian Moore. Michael Rucker came on in relief. The Mariners (75-86) said Anderson had a left forearm bruise.

Ward, who has struggled since joining the Mariners from Baltimore at the trade deadline, drove in Cole Young and Michael Arroyo with his hit off Angels lefty Mitch Farris (1-4).

Crawford hit Farris’ next pitch into the right field stands.

The Angels (62-99) tied the game with four runs in the sixth. Bryce Teodosio drove in a two-run single off reliever Jose Ferrer, Wade Meckler scored from third on a sacrifice bunt from Tyler Heineman and Jose Siri tied it on a groundout to third base that scored Teodosio.

In the ninth inning, Josh Naylor reached on a walk and stole second base, becoming the first first baseman since George Sisler in 1920-1922 to have consecutive 30-steal seasons.

Gabe Speier pitched a scoreless ninth inning for the Mariners. Carlos Vargas (3-0) got the win.

Up next: Angels left-hander Yusei Kikuchi (1-6, 4.88 ERA) will face Mariners right-hander Logan Gilbert (12-11, 3.81 ERA) in Sunday’s season finale.