SACRAMENTO — Senior Ayla Teegardin of Palisades held her head high on Saturday morning. A 51-37 loss to Yuba City Faith Christian in the state Division IV girls basketball final at Golden 1 Center couldn’t lessen the inspiring backstory of how she and her Dolphin teammates had already won by making it to the final despite all the trial and tribulations of the Palisades Fire that destroyed a community in January 2025.
Teegardin lost her home, spent three months in a hotel and battled to regain her teenage life.
“I struggled with a lot of anxiety coming into games,” she recalled.
Basketball and teammates kept her focused. This season has been another challenging time with practices at night and at middle schools until the high school gym was finally re-opened at the end of January.
On Saturday, Palisades (16-14) fought Faith Christian (34-1) to almost a draw at halftime, trailing 29-26. But the Dolphins scored only 11 points in the second half and had no answer for Long Beach State-bound Lauren Harris, who came in as the nation’s career three-point scoring leader while averaging 31.2 points this season. She finished with 26 points, 16 rebounds, five assists, three blocks and two steals. She made a half-court shot at the end of the first quarter.
Elly Tierney of Palisades did her best on offense with 15 points and six rebounds. Teegardin finished with three points and six rebounds. Only three players scored the entire game for Faith Christian.
The Dolphins outrebounded Faith Christian 43-33 but made only 15 of 63 shots.
Faith Christian’s Lauren Harris, the national career record holder for threes, makes half-court shot. End of 1, Faith Christian 13, Palisades 11. pic.twitter.com/iWbDdKPwOf
When Birmingham High’s Tekeio Phillips and X’Zavion McKay were asked if they are surprised that the Patriots are playing for a Division III state boys’ basketball championship on Friday at Golden 1 Center in Sacramento after losing in the first round of the City Section Open Division playoffs, the answer was unanimous: Yes.
The Patriots (22-7) have won four consecutive state playoff games to earn a spot against Antioch Cornerstone Christian (28-8) in a 4 p.m. final. Fellow City Section member Sylmar (24-12) is playing San Marin (21-13) for the Division V title at noon. On Saturday, Palisades’ girls’ team plays Faith Christian at 10 a.m.
Birmingham lost to Fairfax 66-58 on Feb. 11 in the City playoffs and didn’t play another game until March 3. How do you get your team motivated for state playoffs after three weeks off?
“We didn’t do anything the rest of the week and took the next week off,” Halic said. “We rested our bodies and emotionally refreshed.”
Most importantly, Patriot players decided they wanted to win in the state playoffs.
“It definitely helped us offensively connect better,” Halic said. “We’re playing a better game these last four games. When you lose you’re disappointed and sometimes going into state, people don’t care. It’s such a great opportunity for us.”
Phillips is averaging 22.8 points. McKay is averaging 12.6 points and 10.5 rebounds. Phillips has twice played at Golden 1 Center when he was a member of the Alijah Arenas-led Chatsworth team.
“It’s just a bigger gym,” Phillips said. “I feel comfortable.”
This is a daily look at the positive happenings in high school sports. To submit any news, please email eric.sondheimer@latimes.com.
When Jeff Bryant was playing high school basketball at Sylmar, the top teams in the City Section were annually among the best in California.
“The City dominated back in the day,” Bryant, now the head coach at Palisades, said Tuesday before Southern California Regional Division II boys’ basketball final. His Dolphins lost a heartbreaker, 59-57 at Bakersfield Christian, falling a win short of a trip to Sacramento for the state finals.
Eleven days earlier Palisades captured the City Open Division crown, going undefeated against section opponents, and with 10 players — including all five starters — returning next season, Bryant not only has his sights set on a repeat, he wants to reverse a 15-year trend during which City teams have struggled to compete at the highest level.
City boys teams won the state’s top division five times in six years from 1993-98 and seven times in nine years from 2002-10. However, since the Open Division debuted in 2013 only two City teams have advanced to the regional finals in that division — Westchester in 2014 and Fairfax in 2015 — and the last time a City team made the Open bracket was five years ago when Birmingham lost in the first round.
Bryant, who graduated in 2006, will be rooting for his former coach on Friday when his alma mater plays for the Division V state championship under the guidance of Bort Escoto, who piloted the Spartans to the City Division II title on the same night Palisades won the Open Division. Sylmar was dropped down to Division V for regionals and ran the table.
Birmingham was upset by Fairfax in the opening round of the City Open Division playoffs Feb. 11 and dropped to Division III for the regional tournament. The Patriots have since reeled off four convincing victories and will also play for a state title Friday afternoon.
Birmingham and Sylmar are the latest City teams to benefit from regional playoff expansion in which teams are placed several divisions lower from where they played in their section. Chatsworth advanced to the Division II state final last winter after losing in the City Open Division final and reached the Division IV state final after its City Open semifinal loss two years ago. Like Sylmar this season, Verdugo Hills was the City Division II champion in 2024 and went on to play for the Division V state title.
On the girls’ side, no City squad has won an Open Division state playoff game. Five teams from the section have received berths in the highest division over the last 14 years, but none since Fairfax in 2018. Narbonne is the last City team to conquer the state’s top division, claiming back-to-back Division I titles in 2000 and 2001, long before the Open debuted.
Like the boys, City girls’ teams fare well when dropped to lower divisions.
Palisades, which fell in the first round in the City Open Division, plays for the state Division IV crown Saturday while City Open Division champion Westchester was seeded 14th in Division I for regionals and lost in the first round. Granada Hills went to the Division III state finals two years ago after losing in the first round of the City’s Open Division.
Before taking the helm at Palisades, Bryant guided West Ranch of the Southern Section into the Open Division regional playoffs in 2023. Now he aims to do the same at a school in the section he once played in.
#5 Bakersfield Liberty vs. #4 Palisades, 4:30 p.m. at Birmingham
#6 Los Alamitos at #3 Bonita Vista
#7 Mt. Carmel at #2 Newport Harbor
DIVISION IV
#8 Animo Leadership at #1 Irvine University
#5 Chatsworth at #4 Bakersfield
#6 Santa Ana Valley at #3 La Jolla
#7 Esperanza vs. #2 Granite Hills at Newton Bass Stadium
DIVISION V
#8 LA Roosevelt at #1 Ontario Christian
#5 Kern County Taft at #4 North Hollywood
#6 Orange County Pacifica Christian at #3 Garfield
#7 San Diego Lincoln at #2 Pasadena Poly
GIRLS
DIVISION I
#8 Eastvale Roosevelt at #1 Santa Margarita, 4 p.m.
#5 Redondo Union vs. #4 Cleveland, 6 p.m. at Taft
#6 Oaks Christian at #3 Mt. Carmel
#7 North County San Marcos at #2 Mater Dei
DIVISION II
#8 Westview at #1 Newport Harbor
#5 Sherman Oaks Notre Dame at #4 Carlsbad
#6 Granada Hills at #3 Garces Memorial
#7 La Costa Canyon vs. #2 Westlake at Cal Lutheran
DIVISION III
#8 Palisades at #1 Del Norte, 4:30 p.m.
#5 El Diamante at #4 Quartz Hill
#6 Crescenta Valley at #3 Ayala
#7 Tulare Western at #2 Millikan
DIVISION IV
#8 Segerstrom at #1 Birmingham, 7 p.m.
#5 Coachella Valley at #4 Ramona
#6 Mission Vista at #3 San Jacinto
#7 Del Sol vs. #2 Immaculate Heart at Rio Mesa
DIVISION V
#8 Coastal Academy at #1 Ocean View
#5 Bravo at #4 Webb
#6 Marquez at #3 Delano Kennedy
#7 Sun Valley Poly vs. #2 Santa Monica Pacifica Christian at Lincoln Middle School
Note: Semifinals 1 p.m. or 5 p.m. Thursday at higher seeds; Finals 1 p.m. or 5 p.m. Saturday at host sites; State Championships March 13-14 at Matomas High in Sacramento (times TBA).
When the horn sounded to end Friday night’s City Section Open Division boys’ basketball final, the first person OJ and EJ Popoola wanted to hug was their father, Chris.
Thirty years ago, he transferred from Westchester to Palisades to help the Dolphins reach the 4A semifinals. In June, his twin sons transferred to his alma mater from a Detroit prep school with hopes of making their papa proud and lifting the town’s spirit.
Mission accomplished.
OJ scored 19 and EJ added 17 as the Dolphins used tenacious defense, a three-point barrage and a relentless transition attack to overwhelm Cleveland, 75-56, at L.A. Southwest College.
Jack Levey made five three-pointers, raising his season total to 108, and Phil Reed had 13 points.
“This means everything,” OJ Popoola said. “Since the first day we came here this is what we wanted to do, bring joy back to the community.”
“We’re coming back next year to defend the title,” EJ Popoola added. “My dad’s team came up short but we finished the job.”
Playing the final at a neutral site was nothing new for a squad that did not play in its own gym for 42 straight games — a span of 388 days — in the aftermath of the Palisades fire last year.
“We accomplished two goals, winning league and City,” second-year coach Jeff Bryant said. “Now state is the third goal.”
Palisades (20-11) was in command from the start. OJ Popoola swished a three-pointer from the corner, Reed got a steal and scored on a layup, and Levey passed to OJ Popoola for a dunk, making it 7-0 after only 55 seconds. The Dolphins stretched the lead to 25-8 by the end of the first quarter and the margin was 19 by halftime.
Both teams lost in the Open Division semifinals last winter and were the preseason favorites to play for the title. They were awarded the top seeds in the eight-team bracket after each finished first in its league.
The Dolphins staked their claim as the best team in the City for the first time since 1969, when Palisades routed Reseda 85-57 in the final at Pauley Pavilion under the program’s first coach, Jerry Marvin, to finish the season 21-1 when there was only one playoff division. Leading that team was forward Chris Marlowe, who was named MVP after netting 29 points in the title game. He went on to captain the U.S. Olympic volleyball team that won the gold medal at the 1984 Summer Olympics.
Since it opened in 1961, Palisades has been the crown jewel of the City Section, claiming more than 260 titles across all sports (more than twice as many as the next-closest school), but this is only the third in boys’ basketball.
Palisades captured the Division I crown six years ago under former coach Donzell Hayes, who was a teammate of Chris Popoola on the Dolphins’ 1995-96 team that fell in overtime to Crenshaw (coached by the legendary Willie West) in the 4A semifinals.
“My team was one game away but these kids completed the circle,” Chris Popoola said, then referenced a famous Dolphins alum. “I hope Steve Kerr was watching.”
Sophomore guard Charlie Adams, who scored 24 points in the Cavaliers’ 68-64 overtime win against Fairfax in the semifinals, was limited to 13 — part of Bryant’s pregame plan.
Sergine Deme scored 19 points and had five dunks, and TJ Wansa added 11 points for No. 2 Cleveland (20-10), which was seeking its first championship since back-to-back 3A titles under Greg Herrick in 1981 and 1982.
No City opponent came closer than 15 points against Palisades, which now waits to see what division it will play in for the state playoffs.
A half dozen little kids have come out of the bleachers seeking high fives from any Palisades High basketball player. Jack Levey, the smallest player on the court, responds to the delight of the fanatics. Receiving recognition and giving back to those rooting for you is among the most memorable parts of the high school sports experience.
Palisades is on the verge of winning its first upper division City Section basketball championship since 1969. The Dolphins will play Cleveland on Friday night at 8 p.m. at L.A. Southwest College for the Open Division title.
Levey, a 5-foot-10 junior guard, is the secret weapon who shows up when the Dolphins’ three stars — freshman Phillip Reed and junior twins EJ and OJ Popoola — need a little help.
“All the attention is on them,” he said. “I’m always open.”
His contribution comes in the form of making three-pointers.
“I practice all the time,” Levey said. “Any time I’m in the gym, I’m shooting threes. That’s why I know if I’m going to play in college, I have to be able to shoot threes.”
If he’s not shooting 400 threes a day at practice, he’s in the backyard at home in Westchester shooting threes on a hoop, with his father feeding him passes.
He has made 103 threes this season. During Palisades’ 71-56 semifinal victory over San Pedro on Saturday night, he stole the ball and was leading the fast break for what looked like could have been a breakaway layup. Instead, he pulled up on the wing and made a three.
“I’m more comfortable shooting a transition three than getting to the basket,” he said. “I feel like a three is a layup.”
Coach Jeff Bryant has given him the green light to pretty much shoot from anywhere. In a game against Westchester this season, he was 11 for 12 from three-point range.
Jack Levey celebrates a big win in the Dolphins’ return to their home court against Western League rival Fairfax.
(Steve Galluzzo / For The Times)
“I couldn’t miss,” he said. “It was so fun. It was the best.”
Other coaches in the Western League know they must pay attention to Levey or suffer the consequences.
“He’s one person we game plan for to limit his looks,” University coach Steve Ackerman said. “He’s an exceptional three-point shooter and has even improved over last season.”
Levey’s journey wasn’t necessarily supposed to turn him into a three-point shooter. Growing up, he was usually the tallest player on his youth team. Then he stopped growing and saw others pass him by. When he entered high school, he had to re-invent himself.
“I thought I was going to be 6-3,” he said. “I have to be able to shoot the ball.”
You’d have to know nothing about basketball these days to fail to guess who his favorite player is.
“Steph Curry,” he said. “That’s my GOAT.”
In a season where the overall talent level in City Section basketball probably reached a new low, the young talent at Palisades provides a starting point to move forward. Reed, the talented freshman, had 29 points Saturday in the semifinals.
And from a fan perspective, waiting for Levey to launch one of his threes offers a moment of excitement and entertainment that even makes little kids look up and put down their video games to see if the ball goes in.
A long-awaited set of reports on how to build a fire-resilient Pacific Palisades, commissioned by Los Angeles city officials for $5 million, found that much of the hilly enclave remains out of compliance with standards for evacuating during a disaster.
The reports, by the city and the global infrastructure firm AECOM, also recommended that the city complete significant brush clearance work, bolster its water system and move electrical wires underground.
All of the recommendations are frequent asks from Palisades residents. Many have already been discussed at length by independent experts. They will inform the city’s “Long-Term Recovery Plan” for rebuilding infrastructure and improving wildfire resilience after the Palisades fire killed 12 people and destroyed thousands of homes in January 2025.
The reports outlined nearly a billion dollars in infrastructure projects through 2033, including more than $650 million for electrical undergrounding and $150 million for water system repairs.
“Full recovery is a long-term, multi-year effort that requires sustained coordination — and it must continue to be community-led,” Mayor Karen Bass wrote in a Tuesday newsletter to Palisades residents that included links to the reports. “This past year has been unimaginable for the Palisades community, but I remain committed to supporting you through every step of the recovery.”
She noted that the Long-Term Recovery Plan would be finalized “in the months ahead.”
A month after the fire, Bass selected Illinois-based Hagerty Consulting to work on fire recovery under a yearlong contract for up to $10 million.
However, in June, Bass announced that AECOM would develop a recovery plan for the city. Hagerty, which had struggled to explain its role at community meetings, ultimately focused on debris removal logistics and finished its work in December, billing the city $3.5 million.
In December, the city authorized payments of $5 million for AECOM’s first set of reports — which were originally due in mid-November — and an additional $3 million to the company for long-term recovery planning.
Palisades residents say they are frustrated at the price tag and feel that the effort has been chaotic and lacked urgency. Some have questioned whether the reports would contain an honest assessment of the situation, given that AECOM is not working independently of the city.
The three AECOM reports consist of recommendations for improving the Palisades’ fire resiliency, a plan for rebuilding public infrastructure destroyed in the fire and how to coordinate traffic and other logistics as the area becomes a construction zone.
The resiliency report found that “almost all” local streets within the Palisades are narrower than permitted by the city fire code — particularly in the Alphabet Streets, Rustic Canyon and Castellammare areas. A “majority” of long dead-end streets did not fulfill the sections of the fire code ensuring that fire engines have enough space to turn around, the report said.
A lawsuit filed in December alleged that the city has routinely failed to comply with similar state regulations when it approved new construction in the city’s “very high fire hazard” areas.
These codes “directly impact the ability to fight fires and for civilians to safely evacuate,” said Jaime Hall, an attorney representing the plaintiffs, who are a group of resident associations in the Santa Monica Mountains and a fire safety advocacy organization. “They’re not just regulations on a piece of paper.”
The resiliency report also found that residents experienced “evacuation warning fatigue” from routine false alarms, making them hesitant to evacuate.
Additionally, many intersections in the Palisades could serve as bottlenecks during evacuations, leading to significant delays, the resiliency report said, basing the conclusion on a traffic pattern analysis. A Times investigation found that the city had not conducted a similar analysis to help comply with state law.
Requirements to clear vegetation around homes, including the state’s upcoming Zone Zero regulations, are not enough to meaningfully reduce wildfire risk in the Palisades, with its steep topography and dense vegetation, the resiliency report found. The city should work with land managers — including the state and county — on measures such as cutting gaps in vegetation for firefighter access, maintaining defensible space around community infrastructure and restoring native vegetation, the report said.
The public infrastructure report listed $150 million for “wet” infrastructure repairs, which included replacing aging and leaky water main pipelines.
The resiliency report outlined further potential improvements to provide more water for firefighting, such as building larger pipelines and additional tanks to move and store more drinking water; improving connections between local water systems; and tapping stormwater, treated wastewater or even seawater from the Pacific.
During the Palisades fire, hillside tanks ran out of water. Many fire hydrants, particularly in higher-elevation areas, lost pressure and ran dry. The resiliency report said that installing pressure monitoring systems could “ensure water availability and prevent dry hydrants by streaming live data to fire crews,” and that remote-controlled valves could also help maintain water pressure during a fire.
The city’s Department of Water and Power is already considering options for improving the Santa Ynez Reservoir, which was empty and awaiting repairs of its floating cover when the Palisades fire erupted.
The city has also committed to placing power lines underground in the Palisades where feasible.
The infrastructure report laid out six undergrounding projects that would cost the city $664 million, after nearly 57% of all electric service points — from power distribution poles to transmission lines — were completely destroyed in the fire.
There are two, seemingly irreconcilable, stories of how the Palisades fire became a deadly and destructive behemoth dominating post-fire discourse. One is told by the residents who lived through it, and the other by the government officials who responded to it.
Government officials have routinely argued they had little agency to change the outcome of a colossal fire fanned by intense winds. Palisadians point to a string of government missteps they say clearly led to and exacerbated the disaster.
Officials’ unwillingness to acknowledge any mistakes has only sharpened residents’ focus on them, functionally bringing to a grinding halt any discourse around how the two groups can work to prevent the next disaster.
Instead, residents have been left feeling gaslighted by their own government, while fire officials struggle to navigate the backlash to new fire safety measures.
When officials and residents do talk solutions, the former tend to emphasize personal responsibility — most prominently, Zone Zero, which will require residents to remove flammable materials and plants near their homes — while the latter often push for greater government responsibility: a bolstered fire service and a beefed-up water system.
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The Fire Department failed to put out the Lachman fire a week prior. Mayor Karen Bass then left the country during dangerous weather while the deputy mayor for public safety position was vacant after Brian K. Williams, who formerly held the role, was put on leave after allegedly making a bomb threat against City Hall. L.A.’s city Fire Department officials failed to deploy 1,000 firefighters in advance of the fire and did not call for firefighters to work extended hours, while dozens of fire engines were out of commission at the time, waiting for repairs.
An aircraft drops fire retardant on the Palisades fire on Jan. 8, 2025.
However, when government officials — be it the mayor, the fire chief or the governor — describe the fire, they tell a different story:
The day after the fire erupted, Bass placed some of the blame on climate change, which some scientists argue has exacerbated fires in the area by increasing the frequency and intensity of hot, dry and windy conditions. Fire officials stressed that the winds during the first few days of the fires were so strong that there was little even the best-equipped fire service could do and that the fire grew so large that there wasn’t a single fire hydrant system in the world that could handle the demand.
Many residents don’t deny that, under such extreme conditions and after the fire reached a certain scale and ferocity, the destruction became inevitable — and there are many who would just like to move on from January 2025.
However, others remain frustrated that these official versions of the story do not acknowledge the government’s failure to prepare for such conditions and its failure to stop the fire before it passed the threshold of inevitability. Indeed, at times, officials have shied away from these uncomfortable discussions to shield themselves from potential liability.
One telling example: On the one-year anniversary of the fire, residents gathered to voice these frustrations at a protest in the heart of the neighborhood. But when Bass was asked to comment on the event, she dismissed it as an unfit way to commemorate the anniversary and accused organizers of profiting off the disaster.
Survivors gathered in Palisades Village to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the Palisades fire on Jan. 7, 2026.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
This sort of dismissal has essentially forestalled any constructive discussions of climate change, the limits of the fire service and water systems and proposals like Zone Zero, since so many Palisadians now feel like any of that is just a fig leaf for the government’s agency and responsibility, and not a good faith discussion of how to solve the wildfire problem.
The reality is, how climate change is influencing wildfires in Southern California is still a subject of debate among scientists. That doesn’t mean that local leaders need to sit on their hands and wait for consensus. Experts can easily point to a litany of steps that can be taken to better protect residents, regardless of how profound the impact is of global warming on fire risk in the region.
Fire scientists and fire service veterans (who have the pleasure of speaking freely in retirement) argue both personal responsibility and government responsibility play key roles in preventing disasters:
Home hardening and defensible space slow down the dangerous chain reaction in which a wildfire jumps into an urban area and spreads from house to house. It is then the responsibility of a prepared and capable fire service to use that extra time to stop the destruction in its tracks.
The bottom line is that neither the government’s story nor the residents’ story of the Palisades fire is fundamentally wrong. And neither is fully complete.
The conversations around fire preparedness that need to happen next will require both homeowners and government officials to acknowledge they both have real agency and responsibility to shape the outcome of the next fire.
More recent wildfire news
Mayor Karen Bass personally directed the watering down of the city Fire Department’s after-action report on the Palisades fire in an attempt to limit the city’s legal liability, my colleague Alene Tchekmedyian reports. The revelations come after Bass repeatedly denied any involvement in the editing of the report to downplay failures.
Last Thursday, California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta announced his office had opened a civil rights investigation into the fire preparations and response for the Eaton fire, looking for any potential disparities in the historically Black west Altadena, my colleague Grace Toohey reports. West Altadena received late evacuation alerts, and officials allocated limited firefighting resources to the neighborhood.
Meanwhile, the federal government is hard at work attempting to unify federal firefighting resources within the Department of the Interior — including from the Bureau of Land Management and National Park Service — into one U.S. Wildland Fire Service by the end of the year. The effort does not yet include the federal government’s largest firefighting team in the U.S. Forest Service. Because it is housed under the Department of Agriculture, not the Department of the Interior, merging it into the U.S. Wildland Fire Service would probably require congressional approval.
A few last things in climate news
An investigation from my colleague Hayley Smith found that, as Southern California’s top air pollution authority weighed a proposal to phase out gas-powered appliances, it was inundated with at least 20,000 AI-generated emails opposing the measure. When staff reached out to a subset of people listed as submitters of the comments, only five responded, with three saying they had no knowledge of the letters. The authority ultimately scrapped the proposal.
The National Science Foundation announced last week that a supercomputer in Wyoming used by thousands of scientists to simulate and research the climate would be transferred from a federally funded research institute to an unnamed “third-party operator.” It left scientists shocked and concerned.
The Department of Energy has made new nuclear energy a priority; however, no new commercial-scale nuclear facilities are currently under construction, and it’s unclear how the U.S., which imports most of the uranium used by its current reactors, would fuel any new nuclear power plants. These sorts of technical challenges have vexed nuclear advocates who are fighting against a decades-long stagnation in nuclear development, triggered primarily by safety concerns.
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