The Preps Box

This week is The Tribune’s prep football preview week. We kicked off the week with a small school preview in Tuesday’s paper. The rest of the week is as follows: Wednesday - LPL preview; Thursday - PAC 7 preview; Friday - Friday night game preview.

I’ve been out to all the the practice for LPL and PAC 7 county teams and briefly here are my thoughts on the season:

The LPL looks like its wide open this year, especially for Morro Bay, Templeton and Nipomo, which all lost a handfull of key players from last year. However, St. Joseph is considered the No. 1 team in the league after the Saints return three first-team All-LPL players — QB Gavin Kelly, WR Travis Biegel and DL John Sua.

As for the PAC 7, the return of Nick Tenhaeff at Atascadero, and the hold over of all but three starters on defense and the return of QB Thomas Bernal for Paso Robles makes those two teams the early league favorites. It will be interesting to watch how Bernal and San Luis Obispo’s second-year staring QB David Schulz compare to eachother this year because early indications are they should be competing for the county’s top QB honor. San Luis Obispo lost a lot of seniors and is rebuilding its defense. Clark Goossen, Arroyo Grande’s quarterback, could be in for an interesting year if the Eagles continue to expand their passing game.

I want to let everybody know early in the week that I will try and do live blogging from football games I’m covering this season. So tell people you know who live out of the area and can’t make games, or if you can’t get out to a stadium on Friday nights,  this up-to-the minute option for following the local action.