Compton Centeial's football season in jeopardy

[email protected] Low numbers and a late coaching switch have forced the Compton Centeial football team to forfeit its first three games of the season.

First-year coach Adam Leonard hasn’t held a full practice yet due to low numbers but he and athletic director Dominic McGiffert-Sandoval are confident the Apaches will field a team this year.

Leonard isn’t anticipating having enough players for a full practice until at least the first day of school Thursday. His first scheduled practice is Aug. 21 and the team’s first game will be Sept. 28 against Inglewood.

The Apaches were 0-10 last year, their closest loss being 37-20 vs. South Torrance. The school fired coach Fred Sykes at the end of the season and chose Michael Grimble to replace him in May.

But when Grimble and the school learned he wouldn’t be able to teach on campus because there’s no opening for a P.E. teacher, he declined the job, McGiffert-Sandoval said.

The school hired Leonard in late July. He will teach math at Centeial this year.

Leonard began holding workouts this month but doesn’t have enough attendance to have a practice.

“There’s no way we can play (until Sept. 29), we’ll be risking too much injury,” Leonard told the school district when discussing the forfeits. “It’s not reasonable.”

The Apaches were scheduled to play Compton, Morningside and Cabrillo to open the season. Verbum Dei was also on Centeial’s schedule, but the decision to forfeit was early enough that Verbum Dei found another opponent that week, McGiffert-Sandoval said, and it is a bye on Centeial’s schedule.

Leonard requires 25 players practicing for three weeks before they will play a game.

McGiffert-Sandoval said the low turnout is emblematic of a problem in high school football that’s affecting many public schools.

“A lot of the programs that are strong have feeder schools and feeder systems,” he said. “There’s not really a dominant Pop Warner system in Compton, and most of the kids that do play leave Compton (to private and charter schools.)”

However, McGiffert-Sandoval also said that with Centeial’s academics improving — it recently received its accreditation through 2021 — he believes the program can turn around.

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“As far as building a program where parents feel comfortable sending their kids,” he said, “that stuff is all happening on the academic side at a very fast rate.”

“We’re in a good position. We’ll field a team. I don’t know how many games we’ll win, but as long as the kids are having fun and they’re learning and coming back, then everything is good.”