{"id":14,"date":"2008-12-14T22:49:00","date_gmt":"2008-12-15T05:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.j2custodio.com\/midvally\/?p=14"},"modified":"2009-02-20T23:06:34","modified_gmt":"2009-02-21T06:06:34","slug":"football-around-the-mid-at-the-semis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/?p=14","title":{"rendered":"Football Around the Mid: At the Semis"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

By Joe Torosian<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cFeels great, we\u2019re gonna make history.\u201d
— Cesar Chavez
<\/strong>
<\/strong><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

Sumler\u2019s Enchanted Evening<\/strong>
I wish I knew how many times over the last seven years we\u2019ve used the last name Sumler in a witty headline; Things like; \u201cThe Sumler of All Fears\u201d, \u201cSumler Breeze Makes Panthers Feel Fine\u201d, to name a few and of course \u201cSumler\u2019s Finals\u201d.
All the attention deserves to be on the Rosemead team as a whole, and we\u2019ll get there, but as Friday\u2019s semifinal rolled into the fourth quarter I started adding up how much time we really had left with the Sumler family.
I don\u2019t know them real well, haven\u2019t had turkey at their pad, or exchanged Christmas cards, but Desean, Deon, and Tra have really made our job at the Mid Valley News much easier.
In the last ten years we\u2019ve been covering sports we\u2019ve seen brothers come through and make an imprint.
Temple City had Herman and Antonio Wagner in 2000 and 2001. There\u2019s also high expectations for the Copping twins in the next few years.
Gus and Jonathan Mendoza at South El Monte, we caught the tail end of the Ziska run at Arcadia, and we saw a little bit of the Paytons at South Hills.
However, three brothers progressively getting better each season, we have never seen that.
Desean Sumler was a playmaker who told me in the summer of 2002 that I was going to be writing about him, and I did that season and the next (See \u201cMid Valley News Remembers: Rosemead-Monrovia 2003).
Deon Sumler broke out in 2003 and got better each season before culminating it in 2005 by helping to lead Rosemead to a perfect regular season record of 10-0 with awesome offensive performance.
Tra Sumler last season was the Mid Valley News Most Valuable Player and last night he might have been between 7:30 P.M. to 10:00 P.M. Pacific Standard Time the best high school football player on the planet.
Stats: 289-yards rushing on 40-carries, two touchdowns, a blocked punt, and a madman on defense.
\u201cHe did what he had to do, and handled himself,\u201d Desean said of his younger brother. \u201cI\u2019m at a loss for words, I\u2019m so proud.\u201d
\u201cIt\u2019s unbelievable,\u201d said an emotional Tra before breaking down. \u201cIt feels like a fairy tale, I dreamed about this.\u201d
Of course the fairy tale and the dream were about the Panthers getting back to the CIF finals for the first time in over a quarter of a century.
They got back to the semifinals for the first time since 2001 and also snapped a six year streak of losing in the first round.
\u201cIt\u2019s unbelievable,\u201d said Panther defensive end\/tight end Luis Diaz. \u201cI was little bit nervous but we took care of it. I\u2019m so proud of them (team).\u201d
\u201cIt\u2019s greater than I thought it would be,\u201d said Panther defensive back Alex Chang. \u201cWe ran out the clock and sealed the deal. We\u2019re a family.\u201d
The always respectful to the media Cesar Chavez spoke plainly. \u201cYes sir, we stopped them. Give props to the defense.\u201d
\u201cIt was the players,\u201d said Rosemead defensive coordinator Marc Paramo. \u201cThey work really hard. I have 6:A.M. meetings during the week and they are there. Give them the credit, I get to come out here and direct them, but they do a great job.\u201d<\/p>\n

Props to M-Town<\/strong>
Ryan Maddox and his team performed better this season than anybody would have thought.
Leading that charge was former Monrovia head coach Steve Garrison. \u201cThey\u2019ve done a fantastic job this first year. Fantastic.\u201d<\/p>\n

One More Time<\/strong>
The good news for M-Town defensive back Dujawn Jones is that he is only a junior and will have a chance to erase the memory a sure interception off of Angel Alejandre and even surer return for six-points that went through his hands in the first quarter.<\/p>\n

Looking Good<\/strong>
Don\u2019t let anyone walk away from the 2008 season and say, or think, that the Wildcats don\u2019t have a gem at quarterback in Nick Bueno. That dude is a playmaker and only a sophomore. Expect Bueno to do a lot Good in the future.
Monrovia defensive end Darwin Winfrey played very well in his final prep game as did Kendall Boggs.<\/p>\n

Eerily Reminiscent<\/strong>
Bueno had a pair of snaps in the shotgun formation sail over his head that brought back memories of a pair of bad low snaps David Potts got in the 2006 game against Temple City.
It also raised to mind the often mentioned, but long forgotten, M-Town punter Ricky Romero (who remembers punters?) who preserved a tie against TC in 2000 with a heroic leap and one handed grab of a bad snap.<\/p>\n

Last Word on Brother Garrison<\/strong>
\u201cThat kid hits the hole, and doesn\u2019t mess around,\u201d he said of Sumler. \u201cI\u2019m tired of looking at that family,\u201d he laughed. \u201cHis brother got me for 200 hundred yards.\u201d
When I mentioned that Deon got him 282-yards and three touchdowns in 2005 and Desean for 114-yards and score in 2003 he just looked at me. \u201cYou enjoy bringing up all these good memories?\u201d
Garrison says that he is happy and has completed most of his \u201cHoney-Do\u201d list and was ready for football after spending his first fall away from the game since he was a child.
\u201cThe fires are still burning,\u201d he said. <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Joe Torosian \u201cFeels great, we\u2019re gonna make history.\u201d— Cesar Chavez Sumler\u2019s Enchanted EveningI wish I knew how many times over the last seven years we\u2019ve used the last name Sumler in a witty headline; Things like; \u201cThe Sumler of All Fears\u201d, \u201cSumler Breeze Makes Panthers Feel Fine\u201d, to name a few and of course […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-high-school-sports"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":145,"href":"https:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions\/145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}