Loyola High School

Here's the deal. So I remember being in college, thinking "I wonder how Loyola is doing this season?" Then I would search the internet for what felt like 12 years until I was left searching the 35 page archives of latimes.com trying to find the Loyola football score from two days earlier. The main website at Loyola is all good and well for the school, but doesn't do much to help quench the sports thirst of former players and people like me who want more than a scoreline. Yes they had Cubs Sports Online for a year or so but that only got updated for like a year and then dropped, so I thought, what the hell, I'm going to include Loyola in my radio station and make them a big part of it so that people like me will have a place to go for all Cubs sports. Hell, maybe in the future I will be able to broadcast live games over the internet, once this station is up and running. In the meantime, let's recap some Loyola High football.

Loyola High School has also had a tradition of sports excellence, and I'll let the stats speak for themselves:

Football: CIF AAAA/Div I Champs - 1962, 1963, 1975, 1990, 2003, 2005
Basketball: CIF AAAA/Div I-A Champs - 1954, 2002, 2003
Volleyball: CIF Div I Champs - 1983, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1995, 2003, 2004, 2005
Cross Country: CIF Champs - 1984, 1985, 2002, 2004; CIF State Champs - 2002, 2004
Track: CIF Champs - 1984, 2000, 2003, 2004
Soccer: CIF Division I/Division II Champs - 1998, 2005, 2007
Golf: CIF Northern Div. Champs - 2000, 2001, 2003, 2005
Swimming/Diving: CIF Champs - 1984, 1994, 1996, 1997
Baseball: CIF Champs - 1954, 2007
Lacrosse: CIF Champs - 2006; Mission League Champs - 2007

Now, that's just championships. Most of them are in the top division in Southern California, which I would argue is one of the toughest if not the toughest in the country. I could list all of the runners up, but I already feel like Billy Bob Thornton with some sort of Friday Night Lights crazy football school. It's a little different than that, but the traditions remain the same. Half the team's Dad always seems to have played for the team or at least gone to the school. As you can tell, they are usually in contention every year, in most sports. Football dominates the scene though, as it does in the rest of the country.

Three years ago, Loyola went in a new direction after legendary coach Steve Grady stepped down. Grady had been the head football coach since 1976, and had won 2 CIF championships and done well in every season. Stepping into the role as head coach was alum Jeff Kearin, who started coaching at Loyola High School in 1980. After coaching there for 10 years, he left for the University of Southern California in 1991 under Head Coach Larry Smith and later with John Robinson. Jeff became offensive coordinator at Cal State Northridge in 1995. In 1999 he went with John Robinson to UNLV only to return as head coach at Northridge for 3 years until the program was eliminated in 2001. After that Kearin coached at Brophy Prep in Arizona, until leaving for Loyola in 2005. Kearin had tremendous success in his first season at Loyola, winning the CIF title in his very first year.

Coming off such a spectacular season, last year's season shocked many in the Loyola community. The Cubs failed to make the playoffs last year for the first time in 26 years, leaving fans to wonder what had gone wrong, and most people began to turn to the coach for some answers. Usually, there is a bit of a grace period for a coach following a championship season, something like 3-5 years, where the team can basically underacheive, and no one will blame the coach because he brought the school a championship a few years back. But to fall to such a depth, missing the playoffs for the first time in school history, Kearin basically completely bypassed his grace period.

So how have the Cubbies fared this year? With a lot of questions to answer at the beginning of the season, Kearin has left a few of them unanswered. The team is 2-3, including a devastating loss up north to the powerhouse known as Concord De La Salle (55-14). After regrouping to beat Dana Hills 22-0, the Cubs havn't been anything other than lackluster in losses to Dominguez High School (34-24) and Hart (21-13) in somewhat of a rivalry game. Loyola will try to refocus and save their season against an undefeated (but somewhat untested) Chaminade team this Friday at one of Loyola's many make-shift home fields, LA Valley College. With Chaminade being just up the 101 freeway and technically closer to Valley College than Loyola, expect a pretty good "away" support.

Look forward to more Loyola High School rants and raves to come, including pics and a recap from this week's game against Chaminade.

Interested in covering Loyola High School for Go Blue Radio? Email us at goblueradio@gmail.com . Go Cubs!