Venice Is Seeded No. 1 for Playoffs

Venice earned the No. 1 overall seeding in the City Section Championship division football playoffs for the first time, but it came with a tough road to the title game if pairings released Saturday are any indication.

The Gondoliers (10-0), who completed an undefeated regular season for the first time since 1998, will play host to Gardena (7-3), the fourth-place team in the Marine League, in a first-round game Thursday night.

If Venice gets past the Panthers, it will play San Pedro or Crenshaw in the quarterfinals. Both teams finished with 8-2 records and were in second place in their leagues.

“We’re honored to be the No. 1 seed,” Coach Angelo Gasca said. “All that means is you have to go out and prove it. To win championships, you have to beat the best teams.”

Coliseum League champion Dorsey (10-0) was seeded second, with Carson (7-3), the Marine League champion, seeded third. Lake Balboa Birmingham (7-3), the West Valley League winner, was seeded fourth.

“I thought we had an argument for No. 1, but it would have been hard to overtake Venice,” Dorsey Coach Paul Knox said. “They didn’t do anything to stumble and they were ranked ahead of us [by publications] most of the year.”

The first-round pairings took on a different format as league champions were to be seeded one through eight unless the seventh- and eighth-ranked leagues opted to play in the Invitational division. Northern League champion Los Angeles (8-2) did just that and was seeded second in the Invitational bracket.

Because of the new format, Sylmar (7-2-1), Van Nuys Grant (7-3) and Los Angeles Bell (6-3-1) earned first-round home games by winning their league titles.

-- Eric Stephens

Reed Honrath scored three times, converting the game-winning goal with 1:10 remaining to lift Huntington Beach Marina (16-2) to a 9-8 victory over top-seeded Anaheim Servite (25-3) in a Southern Section Division II quarterfinal water polo match at Golden West College.

Servite (25-3), the defending division champion, played nearly the entire match without two-meter standout Adam Hewko, after he was struck in the face while on defense a minute into the game. He suffered a 1 1/2-inch gash above his nose that required 20 stitches to close.