Friendly Journeys

High school sports serve as a rite of passage for the athletes who play them, the student, friends and families that gather to watch them and the sportswriters who cut their professional teeth covering them.

High school football games in Los Angeles date to 1896, but it wasn’t until 1934 that the Los Angeles City Section was born.

The Southern Section was established in 1912 and held its first athletic competition in 1913.

This story is not an attempt to document the achievements of every outstanding athlete, coach and team that made a mark, for there are far too many to chronicle here.

Rather, it is a history lesson of sorts told by current and former Times staff writers who have written about Southland prep athletes. Most of the writers graduated from Los Angeles-area high schools. And while many have gone on to cover college and professional sports as beat writers or columnists, all maintain indelible images of the prep athletes they watched, covered and, in some instances, competed with and against on the playing field.

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I have covered sports for various newspapers in Southern California for 40 years. And although I saw some great athletes while I was in high school--basketball player Billy “the Hill” McGill of Jefferson to name one--it wasn’t until 1969 and ’70 when I worked for The Times that I began to appreciate prep sports.

One of the athletes I wrote about was football player Isaac Curtis of Santa Ana High. Some nights at the Santa Ana Bowl were magical, as fans anticipated his every move.

I also developed a friendship with Times sportswriters Mike Kennedy and the late Avrum Dansky. For the next 20 years, we had a routine during the high school basketball season. Every Wednesday was the same--we’d watch a day game, have dinner and see a night game.

One time we got lost, asked directions four times and arrived at halftime. But we always seemed to get a glimpse of the players we came to see--Paul Westphal of Redondo Beach Aviation and Marques Johnson and John Williams of Crenshaw, to name a few--and that was good enough.

On January 16, 1991, we went to our day game. When we came out we heard that the Gulf War had begun. What to do? Go home and watch TV? Or go on to the planned night event, seeing Cherokee Parks of Huntington Beach Marina?

The decision was to stick with our plans. We could watch the war tomorrow.