Once around the LBC:
• Long Beach Poly opened in 1895, Long Beach City College in 1927 and Long Beach State in 1949. The first sports facility built here was the Virginia Country Club golf course in 1919, one corner of what became Recreation Park and the second name of the course in 1923. A second golf course was built, and softball and baseball fields spread wide and became the backbone of the city’s youth sports programs.
The Long Beach Marine Stadium opened in 1932 for the first L.A. Olympics and is just one of two ’32 Olympic facilities left standing. The Coliseum is the other, although it’s been left by more teams than any stadium in the U.S. (Dons, UCLA, Aztecs, Rams, Raiders, Express, Extreme, etc).
Veteran’s Memorial Stadium opened in 1948 and still gets more use than any other facility in town. Blair Field followed in 1957 for baseball and the Long Beach Sports Arena in 1962, although sports events now are held there on an average of once a decade. The Taj Mahal of U.S. swimming and diving, the Belmont Plaza Olympic Pool, was built in 1968 and since demolished, with the city having done a miserable job of replacing it – as far as some are concerned, entirely on purpose.
The Long Beach Grand Prix has occupied the streets once a year since 1975. The Pyramid opened in 1994. Meanwhile, we have an aquarium that cost more than all of these events combined, and a ship, the Queen Mary, that fought in World War I, arrived here in 1968 and hasn’t budged since.
• The point here is that Long Beach has been a repository for a lot of great events and athletes over the years, and all that spawned the organization that has been the caretaker of those memories since 1956. The Century Club was created by 10 sportsmen and local sportswriters as a way to give back to the community and keep sports on an upward path.The club donated money to teams and athletes who needed some help in their careers. Billie Jean King got to her first Wimbledon thanks to a donation from the club. The group has been naming athletes of the year since ’56, now supports a middle school sports program that has its own banquet and has donated a large sum annually to Long Beach high schools. The last payout was $34,000.
“There’s always been a strong core of supporters who grew up in Long Beach and played for area schools, and we’ve tried to add to the club’s membership reach year,” former president Sam Brueklander said during his last year as president. “A few years ago we topped our all-time high for members thanks to a strong drive to get people involved who didn’t know the club existed.”
• The next Hall of Fame class will be inducted in January, driving the number of HOFers over 150 and being such a completist that nary a sport has been left out. It has surfers, handball players and more coaches with amazing legacies than any Hall.
Former Poly and NFL standout Tony Hill, 49ers basketball star Glenn McDonald, wheelchair star Jim Knaub and the legendary Jerry Tarkanian will be inducted in January. It’s a tough membership to be had when it’s taken 50 years for Tark to gain entry.
• The Moore League’s improvement on the football field took a hit recently when Mike Christensen stepped down after three seasons at Lakewood. Christensen maintained the Lancers’ prominence in the sport during his first stay at Lakewood and took over a bereft program in 2016 and had it playing its best football in a half-decade the second half of 2018.
• The Long Beach State men’s volleyball team received its national championship rings during the basketball home opener earlier this month, and the banner will be raised in January.
• Note to Poly football fans: Narbonne, which won another L.A. City Open Division title Friday night, was quarterbacked by Poly transfer Jake Garcia, who left the program in March.
• With the football season at its end, except for state playoff participants, it’s time to look at basketball. Here are the CIF-SS playoff divisions for the area’s boys basketball eams in 2018-19:
Division 1: Dominguez, Poly, St. Anthony, St. John Bosco.
Division 2AA: Los Alamitos, Mayfair.
Division 2A: Compton, Gahr, La Mirada, Lakewood, Lynwood, Wilson.
Division 3AA: Cerritos, Downey, Jordan, Millikan, Cerritos Valley Christian, Warren.
Division 3A: Artesia, Centennial.
Division 4AA: Bellflower, Cabrillo, Norwalk, Paramount.
Division 4A: St. Pius-St. Matthias.
Division 5AA: Glenn, Whitney.
Division 5A: Avalon, Downey Calvary, Firebaugh.
