Mystery solved: City Section perpetual football trophy found in trash

The last time a City Section football championship game was held in 2019, the perpetual trophy went missing. Lake Balboa Birmingham won the championship that season but never got to retain the trophy for a year. Narbonne was the school last presented the trophy in 2018 but couldn’t find it.

The mystery of the missing trophy was solved two weeks ago when a good Samaritan found it sticking out of a trash bin in Torrance, retrieved it, called the Southern Section office and brought it there.

Commissioner Vicky Lagos of the City Section went to Los Alamitos to pick it up, and on Friday night after Birmingham’s game against Taft, the trophy was presented to coach Jim Rose in a surprise.

Thom Simmons of the Southern Section explained how the City Section trophy ended up at the Southern Section office.

“We had a lady who lives in Torrance call us,” he said. “She said she was on a walk and noticed this trophy sticking out of a trash bin. She pulled it out, read the names on the trophy. She called us, ‘Are you missing a trophy?’”

She was asked to bring in the trophy. “It was a little dinged up but not too much,” Simmons said.

Lagos had the trophy cleaned and updated with the schools that won City Section Division I and Open Division championships since 1912. Crenshaw, in 2006, had been the last school updated on the trophy.