The Rams have lost four games this season, three resulting in part from special teams breakdowns.
In the aftermath of their defeat by the Seattle Seahawks, coach Sean McVay made a significant move.
Chase Blackburn, the Rams’ special teams coordinator for the last three seasons, has been fired, a team official said Saturday.
Assistant Ben Kotwica remains on the staff.
Earlier this month, Blackburn said, “The job of a special teams coach is to be able to adapt and overcome on all things.”
That proved a challenge for a team that features a high-powered offense, and an at-times dominating defense.
On Thursday night in Seattle, the Rams led by 16 points in the fourth quarter when they allowed Rashid Shaheed to return a punt 58 yards for a touchdown. The play sparked the Seahawks’ comeback that sent the Rams to a 38-37 overtime defeat.
The loss dropped the Rams’ record to 11-4, and knocked them out of the No. 1 seed in the NFC and first place in the NFC West.
The breakdown was the latest in a series of special teams issues that have plagued the Rams.
In September at Philadelphia, the Eagles blocked two field-goal attempts by Joshua Karty, returning the second for a winning touchdown on the final play of regulation.
Two weeks later, in a 26-23 overtime defeat by the San Francisco 49ers, Karty missed a long field-goal attempt and had an extra-point attempt blocked. Karty’s kickoff in overtime did not reach the landing zone, giving the 49ers the ball at the 40-yard line.
Before their Week 10 game against the 49ers, the Rams signed kicker Harrison Mevis to replace Karty and signed veteran snapper Jake McQuaide to replace Alex Ward.
The kicking game solidified. Mevis made all eight of his field-goal attempts, including three against the Seahawks, before he missed a 48-yard attempt with just over two minutes left in regulation.
The Rams, who clinched a playoff spot, play the Atlanta Falcons on Nov. 29 in Atlanta and then conclude the regular season at home against the Arizona Cardinals.
Four years after the family of deceased Angels pitcher Tyler Skaggs filed a wrongful death suit against the Angels, and two months into often contentious testimony in an Orange County Superior Court courtroom, jurors are set to begin deliberations on whether Skaggs’ widow and parents deserve hundreds of millions of dollars.
During closing statements Monday, plaintiffs lawyer Daniel Dutko argued that the Angels were negligent in failing to supervise Eric Kay, the drug-addicted team communications director who gave Skaggs the fentanyl that killed him in 2019.
However, Angels lawyer Todd Theodora insisted that Skaggs was a selfish, secretive opioid addict who for years manipulated Kay into obtaining drugs for him. Theodora told the jury that the Angels didn’t owe the Skaggs family any award.
“He died when he was doing things we teach our children and grandchildren not to do — do not chop up and snort pills from the street,” Theodora said.
But it’s not just Skaggs’ family and the Angels who have a lot riding on the jury’s decision. Among those powerful stakeholders who have been watching the proceedings closely are the agencies that insure the Angels.
According to people with knowledge of the Angels’ defense, the team is insured by several companies that each provide coverage with various limits, and it’s possible that those insurers could facilitate a case settlement even before the jury reaches its verdict.
“Insurance companies are in the business of mitigating risk; they don’t like uncertainty,” said Brian Panish, a Los Angeles personal injury lawyer who was not involved in the case but has won several landmark jury verdicts. “They calculate risk and proceed from there. In this case we are talking about multiple insurance companies, a tower of insurance.”
Even though the insurance companies represent the Angels, they ultimately could reduce risk for the Skaggs family and their lawyers through an 11th-hour settlement.
Legal experts say that in cases where enormous sums of money are at stake, the two sides can reach what is called a high-low agreement, with the insurance companies promising to pay plaintiffs an agreed-upon sum even if the jury awards nothing. In exchange the plaintiffs accept an agreed-upon cap to their award — even if the jury thought they deserved more.
A nightmare outcome for the Skaggs family would be the jury awarding them nothing, meaning that in addition to widow Carli Skaggs and parents Debbie Hetman and Darrell Skaggs leaving empty-handed, their high-powered legal team that has spent thousands of hours on the case wouldn’t be paid. Their contingency fee — typically 35% to 40% of an award — would be zero.
A high-low agreement with the Angels would ensure that Skaggs’ lawyers are paid and the family gets some money even if the jury denies them anything.
Both sides are scrambling to assess risk before the jury returns a verdict. Another source of information for the Angels has been a “shadow jury,” a half-dozen or so people hired by the insurance companies to sit in on the trial and provide feedback to the Angels lawyers on their reactions to the testimony.
Next could come negotiations with little time to spare.
“Who is going to blink first?” Panish said. “The posturing and maneuvering is over. The hay is in the barn. The bricks have been laid. I’d be very surprised if they aren’t talking already.”
A person with knowledge of backroom negotiations between the two sides said one insurance company with a relatively low limit on its coverage of the Angels — near the bottom of the tower — has blocked progress toward a settlement. The insurance companies eventually made a “lowball offer” more than a month ago that was rejected by the Skaggs family.
“If a settlement proposal is within the insurance policy limits, there will be pressure on the defense to settle,” Panish said. “But if it is above the limits, say coverage is for $50 million and the demand is $100 million, the insurance companies can’t force the Angels to settle because they would have to pay the excess amount.”
The facts regarding Skaggs’ death are not in dispute. An autopsy concluded the 27-year-old left-hander accidentally died of asphyxia after aspirating his own vomit while under the influence of fentanyl, oxycodone and alcohol the night of July 1, 2019, when the Angels were in Texas for a three-game series against the Rangers.
Kay provided Skaggs with the counterfeit oxycodone pill laced with fentanyl and is serving 22 years in federal prison for his role in the death.
The Skaggs family legal team, led by attorneys Rusty Hardin, Shaun Holley and Dutko, argued that several Angels employees knew about Kay’s own years-long addiction to opioids and ignored team and Major League Baseball policies by failing to report or punish Kay.
Dutko said Kay was operating within his scope of employment when he gave Skaggs and several other players opioid pills — a stance vigorously opposed by Theodora. Dutko referred to testimony that Kay did anything he could to please players — obtaining Viagra prescriptions and marijuana vape pens for them, booking tee times and massages, and humoring them by taking a fastball off his knee and eating pimples off the back of star outfielder Mike Trout.
“From Viagra to vape pens to opioids. Eric Kay’s job responsibility was to get the players anything they wanted,” Dutko said.
Theodora continually portrayed Skaggs as a conniving drug addict who callously pressured Kay to obtain pills for him and doled out pills to teammates, even pressuring Kay to deliver opioids shortly after the longtime employee and admitted drug addict came out of rehab.
On Monday, Theodora reviewed testimony from five of Skaggs’ teammates dating back to 2011 and argued that not only had Skaggs’ drug use escalated over a nine-year period, but that Skaggs had introduced Kay to them and personally obtained pills for the players.
“It’s called the chain of distribution,” Theodora said.
The Skaggs family is seeking not only lost earnings and emotional distress damages but also punitive damages. California law doesn’t allow punitive damages in a wrongful death case, but precedent going back to the O.J. Simpson case makes an exception if the person suffered property damage before death. Skaggs lawyers believe Kay was responsible for fentanyl contaminating the pitcher’s iPad, which was confiscated and never returned to the family.
“The jury first must find the defendant liable for economic and emotional distress damages, and then a second deliberation will determine if punitive damages are appropriate,” said Edson K. McClellan, an Irvine lawyer who specializes in high-stakes civil and employment litigation. “The purpose of punitive damages is to send a message to the defendant: Don’t do this again.”
McClellan said a purpose of closing statements is to “sway hearts,” to persuade jurors who might not have made up their minds. Both sides gave impassioned arguments that the case they presented over two months validated a verdict in their favor.
There were only four days left of shooting on “Hamnet” when Chloé Zhao realized she didn’t have an ending. The filmmaker had led the cast through a week filming the pivotal climactic sequence inside the Globe Theatre, where William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) is staging his opus “Hamlet,” but something was missing. The script had Shakespeare’s wife, Agnes (Jessie Buckley), and her brother Bartholomew (Joe Alwyn) witnessing the demise of Hamlet (Noah Jupe), a denouement that should have evoked a sense of release. But even though the moment was meant to tie Shakespeare’s masterpiece to the still-fresh death of Will and Agnes’ 11-year-old son, Hamnet (Jacobi Jupe), neither Zhao nor Buckley could feel the necessary catharsis.
“Jessie and I avoided each other for the rest of the day because we both knew we had no film,” Zhao says. “We both went home feeling completely lost.”
“We were searching for this ending,” Buckley adds. “It was a daunting idea to try and pull together all the threads of the story we’d woven prior to this moment. I felt incredibly lost and a bit untethered.”
Zhao admits that she rarely preplans the endings of her films because she doesn’t tell stories linearly. She imagines the journey of her characters unfurling in a spiral, with the story extending downward into the darkness before rising back up.
“I’ve had to wait on every single film,” she says. “But this time I was going through the ending of a relationship, so I was terrified of losing love. I was holding on to it with dear life.”
Actors Jessie Buckley and Joe Alwyn with director Chloé Zhao on the set of “Hamnet.”
(Agata Grzybowska)
The morning after they filmed the scripted ending, Buckley sent Zhao Max Richter’s “This Bitter Earth,” a reimagining of his song “On the Nature of Daylight” with lyrics. The filmmaker played it in the car on her way to the set.
“I could feel the tears and the heart opening, and then I started reaching my hand out towards the window,” Zhao remembers. “I was trying to touch the rain outside of the car. I looked at my hand and I realized that I needed to become one with something bigger than me so I would no longer be afraid of losing my love. Because love doesn’t die, it transforms. When we’re one with everything around us, it’s the illusion of separation that makes us so afraid of impermanence.”
The true culmination of “Hamnet” occurred to Zhao as she reached for the rain. If Agnes reached her hand toward the dying Hamlet, he could then rest and she could let go of her grief over losing Hamnet. And if the audience joined her, the sensation of release would be even greater.
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“The thing I didn’t expect, the surprise of it, was the absolute communal surrender,” Buckley says. “The way the fourth wall was broken between the play and the audience, the need to reach out and touch the core of the play. Agnes’ compass has always been touch.”
Although the specifics didn’t come to life until those final days, Zhao always planned the production so the Globe scenes would be done last. Production designer Fiona Crombie re-created the historic open-air theater on the backlot at England’s Elstree Studios using real timber brought in from France. The set version, which took 14 weeks to build, is smaller than the original Globe to create a sense of intimacy.
Plans for the building of the Globe Theatre set in “Hamnet.”
(Agata Grzybowska)
“This is my version,” Crombie says. “Our footprint is a bit smaller overall, but the essential architecture of the tiers and the roofline and the shape and everything is accurate. By virtue of having real beams that are scarred and aged, it feels more realistic. We wanted the whole thing to feel completely authentic. You want to smell these sets and feel these textures off the screen.”
“I told Fiona I wanted it to feel like the inside of a tree,” Zhao says. “So, spiritually, it’s correct for this story. And the play is accurate. We didn’t change any lines.”
Historically, there would not have been a backdrop onstage. But for the thematic purposes of “Hamnet,” a backdrop was essential. “There was a whole conversation about not just the aesthetic but the importance of that motif,” Crombie says. “It’s also a wall that separates Will from Agnes.”
“Hamnet’s” Globe was constructed to have a working backstage so Mescal, Jupe and the players could move in and out of the wings. There were real prop tables and makeup stations, as well as a nod to other Shakespeare plays. “We had a horse from ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ that was loaned from the real Globe,” Crombie says. “There were loads of details everywhere that honored theater.”
The actors learned significant portions of “Hamlet.” Mescal led the cast of players in rehearsals before filming. “We would rehearse later in the evenings as an ongoing part of the process,” Mescal says. “Once the camera came in, it was Chloé’s baby, but we rehearsed consistently throughout the production. It was so cool. I have a lot of sympathy for directors. What I loved about it wasn’t necessarily the act of directing. It was more so the part of the process in helping me to act. It felt weird to direct them as Paul, but I could direct them as Will.”
Paul Mescal backstage at the Globe in “Hamnet.”
(Agata Grzybowska / Focus Features)
Mescal and the players acted out 30 to 40 minutes of “Hamlet” while filming. The actor describes the feeling of being on the Globe stage as “sacred,” both because of the physical space and because of the emotional quality of the scenes.
“It felt very charged,” he says. “Up until that point we knew we had made something very special, but we were also acutely aware that this is where you had to land the plane. And that came with its own pressure. There’s something very special about playing Shakespeare and hearing Shakespeare’s words spoken in that place. The film is talking about the collision of art and humanity, and there are no greater words to communicate that feeling than the words in ‘Hamlet.’”
Zhao enlisted 300 extras to be the theater’s crowd. Each day, Zhao and Kim Gillingham, a dream coach who worked on the film, led the cast and extras in a daily meditation or dream exercise. It was unlike anything many of the actors had previously experienced.
“Everyone dropped into this very deep place of connection to themselves and to what was happening in front of them on the stage,” Alwyn says. “It was this amazing collective feeling of catharsis and connection to something bigger than ourselves.”
(Evelyn Freja / For The Times)
“The performances from some of the supporting artists are extraordinary,” Mescal adds. “And that was intentional in terms of how Chloé constructed that feeling and by having Kim there.”
After Will notices Agnes in the audience, he goes backstage and finally breaks down, experiencing a long-awaited release of grief. Mescal prepared for the scene by listening to Bon Iver’s “Speyside.” Fittingly, it was the last thing he filmed.
“The play becomes something different because it’s being witnessed by Agnes,” Mescal says. “It comes alive for the audience because of this weird alchemy. Something feels different in the air. That moment felt like such relief, like he could just let go.”
“Hamnet” ends with Agnes reaching for Hamlet. In doing so, she gives herself permission to let her son go. It was a moment that had to be discovered rather than constructed.
“The scene became a holding of collective grief in a communal space where we were allowed to let it out,” Buckley says. “It was like a tsunami. I’ll never forget it.”
In Mescal’s mind, the film’s ending is really its beginning. He imagines the relationship between Will and Agnes will go on, continuing the spiral.
“I have no idea how a relationship survives the death of a child, but I do think there is a miraculous hope and they can see each other again in that moment,” Mescal says. “They’ve abandoned each other in certain moments, but now she understands where he went. And I think they will return to each other.”
Oxnard Pacifica had loads of motivation heading into Saturday’s CIF state 1-A bowl game. Having fallen to Sacramento Grant in the 2-AA state final last season, the Tritons were anxious to redeem themselves against Fresno Central East in one of the weekend’s marquee matchups.
The game showcased two high-octane offenses, but every spectacular play by the Tritons was answered by the opponent as they were dealt their first defeat, 42-28, in the second of three games at Saddleback College.
“You’ve gotta win on third down and we weren’t,” Pacifica coach Mike Moon said. “Their offense is hard to stop. We thought we’d be able to score with them and we couldn’t. We wanted to go up-tempo and we weren’t able to do that.”
Pacifica scored first, marching 91 yards in 12 plays, capped by Taylor Lee’s 15-yard strike to Tyler Stewart with 3:21 left in the first quarter. The North region champions punted during their first three possessions and turned it over on downs on the fourth, but ultimately tied the game on a 25-yard touchdown pass from Jelani Dippel to Bayon Harris that finished an eight-play, 78-yard drive with 5:43 left in the second quarter.
Oxnard Pacifica quarterback Taylor Lee slings a pass to the flat in the first half of the CIF Division 1-A state championship game Saturday at Saddleback College.
(Steve Galluzzo / For The Times)
After forcing a punt, Central East moved 82 yards in 10 plays and took a 14-7 lead on Brandon Smith’s two-yard run 1:05 before halftime.
Pacifica received the second-half kickoff and drove 71 yards in seven plays, tying the game 14-14 on a one-yard rush by Isaiah Phelps and David Carranza’s extra point.
Central East moved deep into Pacifica territory on its ensuing drive before Phelps deflected the ball and PeeWee Wilson intercepted it at the Tritons’ 24. However, Pacifica (15-1) was forced to punt and on its next possession, and Central East regained the lead on Smith’s four-yard run with 4:03 left in the third quarter and upped the margin to 28-14 on Dippel’s state-leading 58th touchdown pass, a 34-yarder to Kevin Cooks.
“We knew it was going to be a battle,” Moon added. “They made plays when they needed to and we didn’t. Simple as that.”
Lee hit Alijah Royster in stride for a 74-yard gain to Central East’s four-yard line and Phelps powered across the goal line on the next play to cut the Tritons’ deficit in half with 10:20 left in the game.
However, the Bengals (14-1) recovered a fumble at the Pacifica 18 and took two plays to capitalize on Dippel’s five-yard keeper.
Royster’s 12-yard touchdown reception made it 35-28 with 6:25 left, but Smith scampered 15 yards for his third touchdown to close the scoring with 3:21 left.
Pacifica beat Palos Verdes 20-10 to capture the Southern Section Division 3 title Nov. 28 for its second CIF crown in a row under Moon. The Tritons defeated St. Bonaventure in the Division 4 final last year.
Fresno Central East lost to Huntington Beach Edison in the state 1-A bowl last year at Saddleback.
Lee completed 21 of 31 for 317 yards and two touchdowns but was intercepted twice and sacked three times. Phelps ran for 127 yards in 23 carries. Royster caught six passes for 114 yards and Stewart had seven catches for 93.
Pacifica has played 32 games in the last two seasons and won two section and two regional crowns, just not the ultimate prize it covets.
“It’s a long two years to not have a state championship … but we’ll try to get back next year,” said Moon, who has scheduled nonleague games with Sierra Canyon and San Diego Lincoln next fall. “This is a super group of seniors and the younger players will grow from this.”
WANT to score big for the 2026 World Cup? Then start planning now.
Price-comparison site Skyscanner saw a 340 per cent increase in searches for flights from the UK to host nations the US, Canada and Mexico on Saturday after the draw.
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The World Cup is heading to the US – here is what you need to know if you wish to visit, pictured BostonCredit: GettyEngland captain Kane will be wanting to bring football home againCredit: Getty
Don’t panic, though, as there’s still time to bag a deal and plan the ultimate holiday.
Sophie Swietochowski has tips for booking a World Cup trip, with things to see and do in the cities where England will be competing.
Dallas, Texas
England v Croatia, June 17
The stunning Texas skiesCredit: GettyLonghorn cattle in Fort WorthCredit: Getty
IT may be a booming skyscraper city, but Dallas has managed to maintain that classic Southern charm for which Texas, the second largest state in the US, is so well known.
Even non-footie fans may be familiar with its 80,000-seat AT&T Stadium, home to the NFL’s Cowboys and America’s most famous cheerleading squad, the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders.
A dedicated fan zone will take over Fair Park – a 277-acre parkland in the city centre which annually hosts the State Fair of Texas as well as regular festivals.
More details, including dates and activities, are yet to be revealed.
It would be a sin to visit Texas and not dine at a barbecue joint.
Cattleack Barbeque in North Dallas is one of the best, and it is featured in the Michelin guide for good reason.
Meats are scorched on oak-fired smokers and served with tangy pickles, cornbread, mac and cheese and “Granny’s coleslaw”. Go for the wagyu brisket.
If England win big, take the celebrations to Deep Ellum, the arty entertainment district known for its music venues and boisterous cocktail bars.
New York
England v Panama, June 27
The illuminated NYC skylineCredit: GettyEngland will be heading to the Big Apple on June 27Credit: Getty
IF you have never been to the Big Apple, you’re in for an absolute treat.
England will be taking on Panama at the MetLife Stadium, which sits just across the water from Manhattan and can be reached from Times Square in around 20 minutes by cab on a good day.
If it is your first time, you’ll want to tick off the must-sees, and the best way to do that is with a CityPass.
You can pick one up for around £100 per child and £120 per adult.
It is a rather hefty outlay, but it will save you money in the long run.
Passholders will gain entry to the Empire State Building Observatory and the American Museum of Natural History, as well as their pick of three other attractions, such as the Top of the Rock Observation Deck, 9/11 Memorial & Museum and Ferry Access to Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.
Booked independently, these would add up to almost £200.
The city promises to be even more buzzy than usual during the summer, thanks to a fan village that will open at the Rockefeller Center (July 4-19).
Expect interactive soccer pitches, live match viewing, musical performances and guest appearances.
And if that’s not enough, across the bridge, Jersey’s Liberty State Park will play host to the huge Fifa Fan Festival from June 11 to July 19.
Some of NYC’s most breathtaking landmarks, such as the Manhattan skyline, Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty, will provide the backdrop to interactive experiences and concerts.
Atlanta, Georgia
The Three Lions could head to Atlanta for their first knockout matchCredit: Getty
IF England are successful in the initial stages and win their group, the Three Lions head to Atlanta for their first knockout match.
The Centennial Olympic Park will play host to the Fan Festival there, exactly 30 years after it welcomed the 1996 Summer Olympic Games.
Elsewhere in the state capital, you can walk in the footsteps of the civil rights activist at the Martin Luther King Jr National Historical Park.
Or uncover the secrets of Britain’s favourite fizzy drink at the World Of Coca-Cola.
The museum feaures interactive exhibits and hosts a vault that guards the secret recipe.
Mexico City
The majestic Basilica of GuadalupeCredit: Getty
HERE’S hoping our boys battle it through to the last 16, because that means we will likely be playing in Mexico City.
What better way to celebrate a win (or drown your sorrows) than in the birthplace of tequila?
Licoreria Limantour is frequently named in the list of The World’s 50 Best Bars thanks to its creative concoctions (there are classic drinks, too).
There’s likely to be more than just official fan zones — the Mexicans know how to party so come prepared.
But there’s so much more to do, including the Basilica of Guadalupe temple ruins, museums, cable cars and parks.
Boston
The city of Boston has some great stories to tellCredit: GettyThe marvellous John W Weeks Bridge in Harvard UniversityCredit: Getty
HOME to the world-famous Harvard University, America’s oldest public park and a vibrant harbour, the city of Boston has some great stories to tell from down the years.
Games will take place at the Gillette Stadium, which is being temporarily renamed the Boston Stadium for the World Cup.
It sits in the town of Foxborough, around an hour on the train from the main city of Boston, so you might want to book a stay a little farther out if you wish to save those pennies.
But make sure you don’t miss out on the delights of the city, which has an incredibly rich history.
You can learn all about it and the American Revolution on the 2.5-mile Freedom Trail, which will guide you to 16 culturally significant sites, from museums and churches to meeting houses and burying grounds.
And why sample one Boston foodie tradition when you can do several at once?
Head to Quincy Market, a huge food hall that dates back to 1826 where you can pick up classic New England grub like clam chowder, lobster rolls and the notorious Boston cream pie.
The whereabouts and details of the fan zone are still being decided upon for this city, but you can guarantee there’ll be lots of footie-themed fun.
That was the Ventura football team’s mindset Friday night at Fullerton High.
The Cougars drove 99 yards in eight plays and scored on a 12-yard pass from Derek Garcia to Tristan Phillips on fourth and goal to pull within a touchdown with 2:40 left, but San Francisco St. Ignatius College Prep recovered the ensuing onside kick and gained a first down to run out the clock and hang on for a 42-35 victory in the CIF state Division 3-AA bowl game.
“You are true competitors,” Derek’s father and head coach Tim Garcia told his dejected players minutes later. “We fought, kept fighting, just came up a little short, but let’s not forget what you guys accomplished. You won the Channel League, you won CIF, you won regionals and are state runner-up.”
Ventura defenders Nathan Radwich and Tristan Phillips tackle San Francisco St. Ignatius College Prep receiver Ty Hicks in the first half Friday.
(Steve Galluzzo / For The Times)
Garcia, who is headed for Nevada Las Vegas, entered the game having thrown for 3,369 yards, 36 touchdowns and nine interceptions. He added to that impressive total by completing 15 of 26 passes for 208 yards and two scores.
James Watson had 10 carries for 152 yards and two touchdowns and Western Colorado-bound receiver Jack Cunningham, who entered with a Ventura Country record 116 catches for 2,041 yards and 26 touchdowns, had seven catches for 67 yards.
St. Ignatius (9-6) finished the season on a seven-game winning streak thanks in large part to senior quarterback Caedon Afsharipour, who threw a touchdown pass and ran for the winning score.
The Cougars (13-3) had their 10-game winning streak snapped. The lead changed hands five times in the first half.
Ventura quarterback Derek Garcia passes against St. Ignatius College Prep on Friday night.
(Steve Galluzzo / For The Times)
James Watson scored on runs of 13 and 31 yards on consecutive drives to give Ventura its first lead, 14-7, with 2:33 left in the first quarter.
Steve Malone broke loose for a 44-yard touchdown on the first play of the second quarter and scored on a 27-yard run to put the Wildcats up 20-14, but the extra point was blocked.
Tristan Savage’s one-yard run capped an eight-play, 69-yard drive that put Ventura back on top, 21-20, but St. Ignatius answered on a 61-yard touchdown run by Luke Tribolet and a two-point pass from Afsharipour to Hawkes Packard to take a 28-21 lead into halftime.
Packard caught a 65-yard touchdown pass to extend the North region winners’ lead to 35-21 on the first play of the second half.
Garcia hit Cunningham in stride for a 31-yard touchdown to pull the Cougars within 35-28 at the 3:49 mark of the third quarter. However, Afsharipour’s 27-yard touchdown scamper pushed the Wildcats’ lead back to two scores early in the fourth quarter.
“We’ve done it before a couple times this season … we’ve battled back and come out on top,” Derek Garcia said as reality set in that his high school career was over. “I tried to stay in the present. I’m done being a Ventura Cougar, but now I look forward to the next chapter.”
According to the Echo, Tricia Cowdrey, Green Party candidate for Shoebury, said: “One of the attractions of this playground is that it is close to a beach.
“The steps and ramps nearby have suffered extreme wear and tear, and temporary flimsy fencing is a huge safeguarding concern.
“We ask that secure fencing be erected before the playground opens and that plans for accessible beach access be expedited.”
Work is currently underway to improve access to the beach, however it might not be finished in time for the opening of the playground.
Steven Wakefield, independent councillor for Shoebury Ward, also commented on the project, claiming that it is in the “perfect place, right next to the cafés.
He added that the project will mean that East Beach is no longer a “forgotten area of Shoeburyness”.
Works on the playground could begin in spring 2026.
Initial plans for a new playground were first introduced over three years ago.
And back in the summer, Beach House Cafe opened next door to the East Beach Cafe and marked the completion of a £2million regeneration project.
A recent visitor at the Beach House said: “Love it here! Come for brunch every weekend, drive up from London. Lovely beach setting, food is fresh, tasty & lush!
The playground will feature different themed areas and be open to all age groups and abilitiesCredit: Southend Council
Over the summer, The Telegraph also named Shoeburyness as one of the top 20 destinations in Britain for the best secret and remote beaches.
The Telegraph stated: “Just three miles from the mayhem that is Southend in summer, Shoeburyness has two Blue Flag beaches that are far less well known.
“Its East Beach is the nicest and is popular with local paddleboarders and kitesurfers, thanks to its long strand of sand.”
One key feature of the park will be a submarine with interactive featuresCredit: Southend CouncilWork on the playground could start as soon as the springCredit: Alamy
Since it first opened in 1923, the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum has been the sole home of USC football. No major sports team in the city’s history has played in the same venue for longer.
But after more than a century spent in the city’s iconic stadium, The Times has learned that the 2028 Summer Olympics and Paralympic Games will likely force USC to find a new home for its football team in 2028, with the likeliest option being SoFi Stadium in Inglewood.
Multiple people with knowledge of the situation not authorized to discuss it publicly told The Times that the Coliseum would not be ready for the start of college football season in September 2028 because of the $100-million temporary track that’s being built on top of the Coliseum field to host the track-and-field competition at the L.A. Olympics and Paralympic Games.
The logistics are still being worked out with L.A. 2028, and USC has not made a final decision about where the Trojans’ 2028 football season will be played. A source said the school hasn’t officially determined whether the Coliseum field could be ready later in the fall, perhaps to host a portion of USC’s 2028 home schedule. But even if it is logistically possible, it’s not clear that USC’s athletic department would find that arrangement in its best interest, given it would mean uprooting the team midseason or spending a long stretch of the 2028 slate away from L.A.
“USC and LA28 are working in lockstep on all logistics for the Olympic and Paralympic Games,” USC athletics spokesperson Cody Worsham said in a statement. “We will share details with the public when they are finalized.”
SoFi Stadium officials declined to comment when asked about USC’s possible move to the venue in 2028.
With the closing ceremonies of the Paralympic Games set for Aug. 27, 2028, there would be just two weeks for the temporary track to be removed and the grass field below to be restored ahead of USC’s currently scheduled 2028 home opener on Sept. 9. Multiple people told The Times that’s not a feasible timeline for a structure LA28 chairman Casey Wasserman once called “the most expensive and probably complicated thing we actually have to build” ahead of the 2028 Games.
This isn’t a new problem at USC. Discussions about the plausibility of the football program sharing the Coliseum with the Olympics in 2028 trace back well before current athletic director Jennifer Cohen was hired in 2023. The belief at one point, according to a person familiar with those discussions, was that with some clever scheduling, USC would only have to miss a home game or two.
Now, according to multiple people familiar with the situation, USC is expected to spend the 2028 season at SoFi Stadium, which hosts the NFL’s Rams and Chargers. By that point, it may also be the home field of the city’s other Big Ten football team.
UCLA has already stated it plans to trade the Rose Bowl, where it has played since 1982, for the modern SoFi Stadium, in spite of a lease agreement that runs through 2044. The city of Pasadena and the Rose Bowl Operating Company have since sued the school and SoFi Stadium’s ownership in hopes of blocking the Bruins’ move.
If UCLA forges on with plans to abandon the Rose Bowl in 2026 for SoFi, all four of the city’s major football teams could be playing under the same roof two years later.
Those logistics, however, pale in comparison to what it will take to host Olympic track and field at the Coliseum in 2028, in the same stadium where the competition was held almost a century earlier. The biggest obstacle LA28 faced using an iconic venue that hosted the 1984 Olympics is that there wasn’t enough room on the Coliseum floor for an Olympic-sized track.
Renovations in the early 1990s added 14 rows of seats at the bottom of the bowl, shrinking the size of the Coliseum field. The solution requires installation of a track 11 feet above the field that stretches over the first few rows of stadium seating to met Olympic standards.
To build the temporary track, the Coliseum’s turf and the dirt beneath it will be scraped away, down to the stadium’s concrete base where columns will be placed about every 10 feet. That construction at the Coliseum is expected to begin immediately after the Trojans finish their home football schedule sometime in November 2027.
Bill Hanway, the executive vice president for AECOM — the infrastructure consulting firm hired to oversee LA28’s preparations — told The Times in June 2024 that the track was “an incredibly complex build” in “an incredibly tight space.”
Taking track down will be its own challenge, one that will take longer than the two-week window between the end of the Games and the beginning of USC’s 2028 slate. When a similar structure was built for the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, Scotland, the soccer team that played in the stadium — Queen’s Park FC — didn’t return for more than a year.
Unless that timeline can be slashed, the Trojans will spend the 2028 season switching off Saturdays with their rivals, who, for one year, would be across-the-hallway as opposed to across town.
USC and UCLA shared the Coliseum for 54 years before the Bruins moved to the Rose Bowl in 1982. For 33 of those years, the Coliseum also hosted the Rams on Sundays.
If that feels too crowded to USC, the Rose Bowl is the only other option in town — and suddenly seems to be in serious need of a tenant.
But as of now, according to a person familiar with the situation, SoFi Stadium is the only venue that’s been discussed as a potential temporary home.
Characters stepping out of their plays to address an audience is hardly a new phenomenon. Playwrights have been breaking the fourth wall ever since that invisible barrier separating the actors from the audience was raised.
Sophocles, of course, didn’t need Oedipus to chat directly with the audience. He had a chorus to provide running commentary. Shakespeare, whose theatrical sensibility was informed as much by Renaissance and Classical poetry as by those pageant wagons boisterously bringing miracle plays directly into the lives of townsfolk, had no compunction about a character slipping out of the frame to help audience members arrange their imagination. He even enlists Rosalind in ”As You Like It” and Prospero in “The Tempest” to bid their audiences farewell.
The fourth wall, encoded in the architecture of the proscenium stage, fosters the illusion that audiences are eavesdropping on a cordoned off reality. As the modern theater embraced realism, plays were carefully designed not to wrench their auditors from their waking dream. Maintaining a semblance of truth, as Samuel Taylor Coleridge pointed out in the context of poetry, was necessary to procure “that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith.”
“Willing” is a key word. Art invites complicity, and in the theater, audiences are in on the game. As Samuel Johnson sagely points out in his “Preface to Shakespeare,” “The truth is, that the spectators are always in their senses, and know from the first act to the last, that the stage is only a stage, and that the players are only players.”
How could it be otherwise? As Johnson reminds us, “If we thought murders and treasons real, they would please no more.”
In the Neoclassical era, playwrights were exhorted to observe the unities (of time and place, in particular) to facilitate an audience’s belief. But modern playwrights, particularly those who see their roles as storytellers, have resisted such superficial strictures.
The memory play, perfected by Tennessee Williams in “The Glass Menagerie,” asks the protagonist to serve also as narrator, setting the scene, reflecting on the action and fast-forwarding the story at will. Irish dramatist Brian Friel, a born raconteur, was a master of this use of direct address, writing monologues for his main characters that not only launched his tale but engulfed his audience in the right lyrical mood.
These writers create an environment in which characters can enter or exit the main storyline as if from a magic door. Audiences are cognizant of this portal, but they are encouraged to forget its existence when the drama ramps up, thereby allowing them to have their cake and eat it too.
A friend of mine hates when a character goes rogue and starts chatting up the audience. “Why are you talking to me?” she mumbles in faux outrage. “I paid to watch you talk to each other.”
Perhaps she considers it a dramatic cheat, as though the writer were copping out of the hard work of dramatization. But I have the opposite reaction. I find that playwrights are often at their liveliest when writing in a presentational mood. What they sacrifice in illusionist power, they gain in freedom.
In “Love! Valour! Compassion!,” Terrence McNally, a master of direct address, intensifies the emotional climax of his play by having his characters step forward and explain how and when they will die. This poignant comedy, about a group of gay male friends spending summer holidays together during the height of the AIDS epidemic, gathered the audience in a communal huddle of collective grief while urging survivors — everyone in attendance — to keep the faith.
In times of emergency, it’s natural to want to draw the public’s attention to the shared moment. The theater affords a space — one of the few left in our digitalized world — for this kind of reflective gathering.
Breaking the fourth wall is a tried-and-true method of calling an audience to attention. But a new breed of dramatist, writing in an age of overlapping calamities — environmental, political, economic, technological and moral — is retooling an old playwriting device to do more than inject urgency and immediacy in the theatrical experience.
Characters are not just stepping out of the dramatic frame — they are blurring the line between art and life. Performers are dropping their masks, or at the very least shuffling them, to force us to think harder about what we’re all doing in the theater as the world around us burns.
Kristolyn Lloyd, from left, Irene Sofia Lucio, Betsy Aidem and Audrey Corsa in the Broadway production of “Liberation” by Bess Wohl, directed by Whitney White.
(Little Fang)
Bess Wohl’s “Liberation,” one of the best plays of the year, is having its Broadway premiere this season at the James Earl Jones Theatre under the direction of Whitney White (who matches her fine ensemble job with “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding”). The play, an imaginative account of a group of women banding together in a gymnasium during the early days of the women’s rights movement, begins with a performer checking in on us.
“Hi. Is everyone — is everyone good? Comfortable? Snacks unwrapped? Hello. Hi. Welcome.”
Lizzie, the author’s surrogate (luminously played by Susannah Flood), greets us with the skittish confidence that will turn out to be one of the character’s most charming qualities. She apologizes that theatergoers have had to lock their phones in Yondr pouches. (Cameras are off-limits in a production that has some nudity.) But she immediately confronts the question on everybody’s mind: How long is the play?
Honestly, it’s not even your fault, it’s like, this is the modern condition — not to sound grandiose, ‘this is the modern condition,’ but honestly — it’s like, you decide to come, you get dressed up — Well all right, you didn’t get dressed up — but you put on clothes, thank you for that. You put on clothes. You make your way through whatever you went through — the subway, the traffic, the hellscape that is Times Square — you finally get here, and then you hope that the entire experience will be as short as humanly possible.
Theatergoers seem thrilled that after all the effort they made to be there, they’re not being ignored as usual. But Wohl isn’t pandering to them. She’s connecting to them in the present before ushering them into the past.
Her project, as Lizzie explains in her introduction, is memory — memories belonging to her mother (who recently died) and to her mother’s friends, who set out to change the world. Blazing a trail for women’s equality, they help transform society, even if incompletely. A momentous accomplishment, but then why Lizzie asks, “Why does it feel somehow like it’s all slipping away? And how do we get it back?”
The play rewinds to the 1970s, to a local rec center in Ohio, where a few pioneering women with little in common, beyond the everyday sexism that has hemmed in their lives, form a consciousness-raising group. Lizzie’s mother, also named Lizzie (and also played by Flood) is the ringleader, but a tentative one — as apologetically undeterred as her daughter.
Wohl is writing a personal history that is not her own. She sets up her play to make clear that this theatrical re-creation is her attempt to understand what happened in those meetings of unlikely revolutionaries. She provides space for the women to object to her version of events and to challenge her interpretation of motives.
In one scene, in which Lizzie is about to meet the man who will become her husband, Lizzie the daughter and de facto author interrupts the play to enlist another actor (Kayla Davion, superb) to play her mother. Young Lizzie is understandably squeamish to enact a love scene with the man who will turn out to be her father.
The playfulness of Wohl’s style, while at times informal to the point of desultory, treats the past as an autonomous reality. The playwright can only engage her mother’s history from her position in the present. She can imagine, she can theorize, she can try to do justice. But she isn’t permitted to subjugate her characters to advance her own agenda, no matter how well-intentioned. The personal is political, as the feminist rallying cry has it, and Wohl has taken pains never to lose sight of this insight when imagining the complexities of the lives of others.
John McCrea, left, and Mihir Kumar in “Prince Faggot.”
(Marc J. Franklin)
“Prince Faggot,” by Jordan Tannahill, is built on the reaction to an effete photo of Prince George of Cambridge at the age of 4 that went viral. The play, originally produced by Playwrights Horizons and Soho Rep, is at off-Broadway’s Studio Seaview through Dec. 13. It imagines a queer life for William and Kate’s pride and joy as this young royal defiantly and decadently comes of age.
It’s a daring premise, full of presumption and not really defensible from the standpoint of a real-life boy who doesn’t deserve to be made the object of a sexual fantasia. But Tannahill doesn’t evade these tricky moral questions.
Performer 1 (Keshav Moodliar on the night I attended), who plays both the playwright’s surrogate and George’s future lover, debates the issues with the company. One by one, the queer and trans cast members share fictionalized personal stories, harking back to childhood moments before any declaration of identity was possible.
A thought experiment is under way in this seductively febrile production directed by Shayok Misha Chowdhury (whose play “Public Obscenities” was a 2024 Pulitzer Prize finalist). How might the lives of the characters (and by extension all our lives) be different if heterosexuality weren’t the default assumption?
Intellectual license granted, the company is allowed to run riot in a performance work that maintains a Brechtian distance between actor and role. A playwright’s note in the script clarifies that “with the exception of Performer 4’s final monologue” (which was “inspired by a rehearsal hall interview with actress N’yomi Allure Stewart”), the rest of the play, “including the direct address monologues, is fictional, written by the playwright, and any resemblance to real events is purely coincidental.”
The audience can’t help but be conscious of the daredevil performers impersonating these royal celebrities, intimate friends and overzealous handlers, exposing their bodies, if not their own biographies, in a work that realizes in performance Picasso’s assertion of art being “the lie that enables us to realize the truth.”
Gail Bean and Biko Eisen-Martin in “Table 17.”
(Jeff Lorch)
“Table 17,” Doug Lyons’ meta-theatrical rom-com, which ended its run at the Geffen Playhouse on Sunday, has its character routinely check in with the audience as Jada (Gail Bean) and Dallas (Biko Eisen-Martin) review what led to their breakup. The location for this amorous autopsy is a fashionable restaurant in which the host/pinch-hit server (gamely incarnated by Michael Rishawn) functions as the show’s bitchy chorus.
Lyons has the characters directly engage the audience in a production directed by Zhailon Levingston that incorporated the energy of British pantomime. Theatergoers were encouraged to express their feelings in a comedy that pays homage, as the playwright notes in his script, to such popular Black films as “Love & Basketball,” “Poetic Justice” and “Love Jones.”
The direct address monologues, Lyons stresses, should have “a stand-up comedy feel to them. In these moments the audience is no longer a spectator, but an active participant in the story.”
“Table 17” is more modest in its ambition than either “Liberation” or “Prince Faggot.” It mostly wants to divert. But there was something bracing about the circuitry it created with an audience. Theater wasn’t being imposed onto a paying public. It was instead a shared endeavor, mutually manufactured in yet another instance of a play letting down its guard to reach new levels of aliveness.
