Football: South County Leads Competition for Title, Players

The Southern Section Pac-5 Division football playoffs continue this weekend, and three schools—Mission Viejo, Tesoro and Santa Margarita Catholic—are still alive in the second round.

What makes that so unusual is that those schools, in close proximity to each other, vie for the same talent pool from the same youth leagues.

That was the topic of Los Angeles Times columnist Eric Sondheimer, whose story about the competition for talent can be read in South Orange County Football Talent Pool Powers Area High Schools.

Sondheimer's "10-mile stretch in South Orange County" no doubt includes another team that is still battling in the Pac-5  playoffs, though not competing for the same athletes as the other schools: San Clemente.

In Friday playoff games, San Clemente (10-1) plays at St. John Bosco (8-3), second-seeded Mission Viejo (9-2) plays at Huntington Beach (9-2), Santa Margarita (9-2) plays third-seeded Long Beach Poly (10-1) at Orange Coast College, and Tesoro (7-4) plays top-seeded Servite (10-1) at Orange Coast College.

Sondheimer's notebook also include a snippet about El Toro quarterback Conner Manning.