La Serna knocks Culver City football out of the CIF playoffs

In sports someone has to win and someone has to lose. Unfortunately for the Culver high school's football team they came out on the losing end of a hard-fought battle against La Serna from the city of Whittier. The final score was 52-31 but the game was close for three quarters. The game was played last Friday night at Culver City.

The Culver City Centaurs finished the season with a record of 9-4 overall and 4-1 in the Bay League. They won their first two CIF Division 4 playoff games before losing to La Serna in the semifinals. One game away from the CIF championship game is a successful season at any school.

"Whenever the season ends, what you take from that is looking back on all the hard work the players and coaches and everyone involved put into to it," said Culver City head coach Jahmal Wright last Monday in a telephone interview. "You just kind of reflect and appreciate what it means to be a part of a good overall football program."

After a lot of years playing football and coaching football Wright still gets excited about being a part of something special. "Playing the game that we all love and to have some success makes me feel good," said Wright. "I look at the camaraderie that we have. We don't hang our heads low, we look at the positive aspects of the season and looking at the fact that we made it to semifinals. We played 13 games and we won nine. The good definitely outweighed the bad."

This season the Centaurs had a lot of star players but football is not golf or tennis. It's a team sport but Wright said the players that stood out were the ones who rarely came off the field. Those are the players that played offense and defense.

"Keenan (Carter)was very instrumental to our team," said Wright. "He played on the offensive and defensive line. He was a force. Pierce (Reynoso) comes to mind because he played middle linebacker on defense and tailback on offense. He ran for over 1,00 yards and he also had over 100 tackles. Myles (Singleton) and Braylon (Singleton) had outstanding seasons at receiver and defensive backs."

Wright also mentioned kicker and punter Henry Brownlow who not only had a great season but he recruited other kickers to the team. Quarterback Sammy Silvia had a dream season throwing for over 40 touchdowns. "Sammy was good all season but starting with the game against Palos Verdes (October 20) he was outstanding the rest of the season," said Wright.

Wright also talked about the play of injured wide receiver Mateo Torres and defensive back James Wright. Torres was one the best receivers on the team before he injured his shoulder half way through the season. Wright was a quarterback in the defensive backfield. He was responsible for getting the defensive backfield in the right positions.

There are so many players that should be mentioned in this story like receivers Justin Oum, Keishawn Ross and Gianni Haynes. On defense players that played well were Brandon Mahoney, J.R. Kirkwood, Raymar Williams, Luke Gaynor, Darryl Davis, Cuyler Salaam, Dayne Taylor, Jonas Ross, Ricardo Trujillo, Mario Reyes, Yahir Martinez and Brian Parcedes.

Next week the Culver City papers will do a story on the supporting cast, the coaching staff, game announcers, athletic director, the people who run the snack bar and the crew that gets the field ready on game days.