Titans Take Third

It was a pretty fruitful weekend for the Pioneer High School football team, which took third at last Saturday's L.A. Watts Summer Games at the Home Depot Center in Carson.

The Titans claimed the bronze with a 5-2 record. This was the second-straight strong effort by Pioneer, which finished runner-up to L.A. Jordan in the same tournnament last year.

Pioneer actually had a chance to advance to the championship game and just missed.

Down 13-7 with two minutes left in Saturday's semifinal, the Titans drove to the L.A. Banning 3-yard line with about 15 seconds left. However, on the very next play, the Titans were picked off.

Despite the close loss, Titans head coach Ramon Juarez said he was generally pleased with his squad's performance.

However, an area of concern that the Titans will need to address this summer is their defense.

Juarez admitted that due to Pioneer's small team-size, several athletes are currently tabbed to play both ways. One of those players is Pioneer quarterback Ronnie Palacios, who will also play corner.

"We're still trying to find guys on defense," Juarez said. "That's an area where we'll definitely need to get stronger. I thought this was a good test against some pretty physical guys from the L.A. City Section."