Weekly Football Previews: La Cañada, Flintridge Prep ready to kick off season

Even though every area football team has at least nine games on its schedule this season, maybe no contest is given the same amount of significance as does the season opener.

For the La Cañada High football team, success in game No. 1 has meant everything and nothing at the same time.

The Spartans finished 7-4 last season, took third in the Rio Hondo League and advanced to the postseason.

For new head coach Ryan Zerbel, a repeat effort starts Friday evening for the Spartans versus Verbum Dei at home at 7.

“Game No. 1 is where you set the tone and that’s what we’re looking to do,” said Zerbel, who took over the squad in June after the abrupt departure of head coach Ramsey Lambert for Santa Monica. “We want to establish the type of football that we want to play this season. This is where we identify what type of team we’re going to be.”

La Cañada enters the zero week having won its last three season openers, which often have served as an omen.

The Spartans have advanced to the postseason in three of the last four seasons in which they’ve won their season opener, including last year when the Lambert-led squad defeated Verbum Dei, 13-12, at Los Angeles Southwest College.

As for Verbum Dei, the Eagles are coming off a 3-7 season in which they missed the playoffs and finished third in the South Catholic League standings.

“I know they’re pretty athletic,” Zerbel said. “They can move around the field in a hurry. For us, we need to both stay disciplined and true to assignments. The execution factor is going to have to be high.”

Mountain Empire vs. Flintridge Prep at Occidental College, 5 p.m. Saturday: Visiting Pine Valley Mountain Empire (4-6), a squad out of the San Diego Section, is a bit of a mystery.

“They have a new coach, a new athletic director and they’re running a new offense, so other than that, we know a lot about them,” Flintridge Prep Coach Glen Beattie quipped. “Last year, Mountain Empire ran a double-wing [offense] and this year, they’re running spread, so that’s what we’re going on.”

For the Rebels, their numbers haven’t been all that pretty in openers. Even though the squad dismantled Blair, 45-0, last season, it served little good as Flintridge Prep finished 5-5, took third in the Prep League and missed the postseason.

Over the last five years, the Rebels have gone 2-3 in openers, although that means bupkis since the team’s best year during that span came in 2012, when Flintridge Prep finished 6-5, took silver in league and advanced to the second round of the Northeast Division playoffs.

That season, the Rebels commenced their season with a 32-30 defeat to Army-Navy, also a San Diego Section team.

“The opener is just another game,” Beattie said. “It’s something that we all want to happen because we’re tired of beating our buddies up and we’re tired of scrimmages that don’t count. We want to win, but we have some tough games down the road that we want to win, too.”