First Look

Asked what his first six months on the job have been like, Palisades High head football coach Dylen Smith joked: “If I had 17 arms, I’d need three more!”

Smith is taking the reins of a program that reached the City Division I finals last season, yet several key starting positions needed to be filled and he got his first chance to evaluate his group July 8 at the Westside Classic Passing Tournament in Culver City.

The Dolphins finished 2-5, beating Knight of Palmdale 22-12 and Hawkins of Los Angeles 20-6 and losing to eventual-champion Culver City 20-8, Hawthorne 32-26, Santa Monica twice by scores of 20-14 and 18-12 and Torrance 20-16 on a last-second 20-yard touchdown pass.

“Four of our five losses came down to the last drive,” Smith told his players afterwards. “We as coaches are watching carefully. There were a lot of mental breakdowns. I saw a lot of good things but also bad things that we can fix.”

A former assistant at Brentwood School, Smith is realizing as a head coach he wears many hats: “There’s so much you have to oversee, like uniforms and helmets, scheduling scrimmages and picture day, picking my staff, strength and conditioning—you name it. However, I’m up for it and I welcome the challenge.”

Although he admits it is hard to read too much from one day of seven-on-seven competition and the real test of his team will come when players are in pads and able to start blocking and tackling, Smith sees a lot of potential and enthusiasm mixed with inexperience and uncertainty.

“Everyone’s buying in, which is good,” he said. “I pushed them hard the first week of summer and I’m proud of them. I’d say the defense is ahead of the offense at this point, which makes sense because we’re running the same scheme we did last year with a few tweaks here and there whereas our offense is completely new. We’re only using about half of the playbook right now, so there’s going to be an adjustment period. We haven’t even had the full team out on the field yet.”