The battle for the Ocean League

Red Sox and Yankees, Lakers and Celtics, FC Barcelona and Real Madrid – every great sports team has a rival. In Ocean League, a years-old rivalry between Santa Monica High School and Beverly Hills High School presides. The tension culminates in every sport at our school, but the climax resides in our basketball program year after year.Jan. 23, 2015 is a day that no one will forget. After years of rivalry, tempers boiled to the tipping point, creating a dark corner in the rivalry’s history. After a defeat on Santa Monica’s home court, fans of both teams took their emotions and pride for their school to the outskirts of Samo where a chaotic mob of students gathered at the Civic Center parking lot where a Beverly Hills student’s car was scratched, resulting in police getting involved. How did it get to this point?The initiation of this heated rivalry originated throughout the same plot as any other athletic team, competition. Both schools continuously excel at high levels and almost always one of them wins the Ocean League title.Lately, this basketball rivalry hasn’t been necessarily close as Beverly has won six of the last eight matchups and Samo hadn’t defeated Beverly since the 2012-13 season, until Jan. 22 where Samo was able to maintain their undefeated record of 4-0 in league.“Going into the game I knew it would be the biggest challenge we faced so far during league,” Daniel Schreier (’17) said. “So as a team we knew we had to treat the game as if it were a playoff type game.”Santa Monica had the game under control from the first buzzer, by playing team basketball and completely out playing Beverley both offensively and defensively. The team fed off the ever so rowdy student section, really embodying the rivalry as a school vs. school affair.Many people thought the fights from last year would have played a role in the games this year, but Mikhail Brown (’16) dispelled those rumors.“We had enough internal problems affecting us already, so we didn’t pay much attention to [last year’s fights].”This is a real rivalry and it can’t go without saying that these teams don’t like each other.“I hate Beverly with a passion,” starting guard Chailen August (’16). “Like when I was a freshman I found the rivalry thing silly but now it means so much to me to beat Beverly  everytime and by as much as possible.”No one has played in more varsity games against Beverley then guard Jonah Matthews (’16) who’s been on the team since his freshman year.“Well I think it’s been pretty consistent with the anxiety and excitement brought to the game but one thing is I’ve never won a game there that was my first time winning there.”To really capture what it means to beat Beverley, Brown summed it up the best.“I had this feeling of relief that I wasn’t going to end my high school career without beating them at their house,” Brown said. On tonight“I absolutely hate that gym and that school. The satisfaction of seeing their fans quiet with straight faces because they know we just not just beat them but demolished them on their home court.”[slideshow_deploy id='26678']