South Gate desperately wants to play its high school football playoff game on its home field this weekend. The Rams tried to hide their horrible field conditions from California state officials with the most obvious cover-up since Watergate.
You can’t judge what you can’t see!
Although the high school football game is currently set to be played as scheduled, the standard has already been set. The game could be moved at a moment’s notice.
South Gate wants to play Dorsey on its home field.
A unique weather phenomenon called an ‘Atmospheric River’ caused torrential rains to wreak havoc on the greater Los Angeles area last week and into the weekend. It was a constant downpour.
All of the high school football playoff games were played in the rain, which is something that rarely happens in Southern California. Many of the games that were expected to be the most high scoring finished with less than 30 combined points. There were a lot of wacky turnovers. Chaos ensued.
South Gate High School beat Gardena in overtime during the quarterfinal round of the CIF LA City Section bracket on Friday. The Rams were down by 16 points with six minutes left in the fourth quarter.
They celebrated with mud slides.
#rollbigred pic.twitter.com/hiHRHSZK3c
— South Gate Football (@SouthGateFB) November 16, 2025
Here is a good look at the gridiron from the stands:
South Gate wins pic.twitter.com/jr91Iw9jC9
— Coach Paul (@CoachP1311) November 15, 2025
Needless to say, not great!
South Gate is scheduled to play Dorsey at 7:00 p.m. on Saturday in the semifinal. Its field does not look much better today than it did last week. There was even more rain throughout the week.
California high school officials already moved one playoff football game to a neutral site.
The quarterfinal game between Dorsey, South Gate’s next opponent, and Eagle Rock was actually moved to Monday because of a power failure. And then, upon arrival, officials deemed the field as unplayable.
Both teams had to pack up their gear and move to Contreras High School to play. The Dons ultimately beat the Eagles to advance to the semifinals.
This is the field that was deemed unplayable:
I see grass. pic.twitter.com/pyu2wycuNT
— eric sondheimer (@latsondheimer) November 18, 2025
Here is a better look at the grass:
— EastSideMediaTV 📹 (@ErikSarni1) November 18, 2025
Only in Los Angeles… That’s football weather in Ohio! I digress.
After seeing what CIF officials decided on Monday, the administration at South Gate decided to take measures into their own hands. They don’t want to have their home game taken away from them.
To prevent CIF officials from seeing the true condition of their field, the Rams broke out the tarps.
South Gate wants to play its semifinal playoff game on Saturday so badly at home that it’s broken out a tarp so the City Section officials can’t deem it unplayable after expected rain Thursday night. I thought only baseball coaches knew about tarps. pic.twitter.com/tKBsdyrDRR
— eric sondheimer (@latsondheimer) November 20, 2025
You can’t rule the field as unplayable if you can’t see the field!
There is always a chance that officials could call it off after the tarps are removed, like what happened to Dorsey and Eagle Rock, but the game is still on as of this writing. We’ll see.