The history of high school sports in the San Fernando Valley and surrounding regions is a story painted in triumph.
Championships, gold medals, state and national titles have shaped the history of Los Angeles sports for generations, long before the Lakers and Dodgers ever called the City of Angels home.
Sports history in Los Angeles was planted and continues to act as the roots for what athletics have become in the city today.
Now it’s time to turn back the clock as the Los Angeles Daily News begins an undertaking that will highlight this history from newer powerhouses like Sierra Canyon to uncovering the early histories of schools like San Fernando, Burbank, Van Nuys and everything in between.
Each school’s history matters, no matter how big or small the program.
So begins the LA Daily News’ high school sports “Heritage Project,” a monthly episodic series of stories that will chronicle the legacies of every high school athletics program in the Daily News’ coverage area.
At least one high school will be selected each month to highlight a theme and recognize famed alumni.
More than 100 schools will be part of this series in an area that covers not only the San Fernando Valley but west across Ventura County, north past Valencia to Lancaster, Palmdale and Quartz Hill, east to La Canada, along with coastal schools like Palisades and Malibu. It will take nearly a decade to write about every single high school sports program.
The “Heritage Project” will include famed athletics programs that no longer exist, like Montclair Prep in Van Nuys, Bell-Jeff in Burbank and will chronicle Camp Kilpatrick’s football team.
Want to get involved and have a potential byline online or in print? High school students and local historians are welcome to be included. Email high school sports coordinator and UCLA reporter Ethan Hanson.
Note to readers: Starting the LA Daily News high school sports ‘Heritage Project’ is both a love letter to my childhood and my time spent as a reporter in Indiana. Growing up in Woodland Hills, I read copies of the LA Daily News and LA Times and grew up idolizing reporters and columnists like Tom Hoffarth, Jill Painter, J.A. Adande, Ramona Shelburne, Bill Plaschke, Eric Boal, Dennis McCarthy and Tony Ciniglio.
After cutting my teeth as a freelancer for the Southern California News Group and Ventura County Star, I moved to Redding for four years and later spent three years covering high school sports in Lafayette, Indiana, before returning home to Los Angeles in late May 2026.
Indiana is where my imagination for sports in the Midwest came to life. I covered championship games at Case Arena, where the movie Blue Chips was filmed in Frankfort, and visited multiple historic sites from Hoosiers and wrote about the history of French Lick and the legacy of Larry Bird.
Through those three years, I learned how well historic records of games across men’s and women’s sports were kept and chronicled by both its media members, administrators, and sports information personnel who kept the life of Hoosier Mania alive even as time evolved and advanced into the age of social media and artificial intelligence.
The lesson I learned? History through sports ties communities together. There’s no telling what will be unearthed and how many interviews will be done throughout this time. There will be plenty of hits and some potential misses.
My goal isn’t to create the largest timeline possible. The mission is to find the theme of each high school and uncover the lesser-known tales that tie the past and present together while recognizing famed alumni at each program.
I invite each reader, subscriber of the paper or not, to join in this community undertaking.
– Ethan Hanson