By STEVE GALLUZZO | Sports Editor

Pali Strong! That is the rallying cry around Palisades High School in the aftermath of the fire that broke out Januatry 7 and ultimately damaged or destroyed approximately 40 percent of all campus facilities, according to Principal Pam Magee.  

“We have a unique opportunity to show the strength and resilience of our community in the face of adversity,” Magee said in a statement. “By coming together, we can ensure that our students can stay in their learning environment, with their friends and mentors, at a time when they need it most. The fires have taken a heavy toll on our school community, displacing many of our families and students who have lost their homes and their belongings. However, our students have shown remarkable resilience and the teachers and staff are committed to ensuring they continue receiving the education and emotional support they need.”

Following Dr. Magee’s lead, the athletic department has been tasked with keeping the Dolphins’ sports programs on schedule and finding alternate sites for practices and games because the campus is closed indefinitely. The girls and boys basketball teams played their first contests since the fire last Wednesday and Thursday, respectively. Soccer and girls water polo resumed this week.

“I credit Dr. Magee for putting the press on to get our winter sports teams playing as soon as possible,” Athletic Director Rocky Montz said. “As of right now the plan is to do online learning for at least the next few weeks. I’m not allowed onto campus but from pictures I’ve seen the gym, pool, football and baseball fields look to be in pretty decent shape. We’ve been dealt a bad hand but we’ll handle it the best we can. For league games we’ll play some doubleheaders (meaning boys and girls back-to-back) and others will be separate depending on what alternative locations we can secure. For soccer and basketball, if we have to play league games on the road, we will.  As far as water polo we’re looking at Loyola Marymount, Samo High and SMC or possibly the YMCA pool over by Uni High. Regarding the spring sports, which start their seasons in a couple of weeks, both Cheviot Hills Pony Baseball and Venice Little League have offered to let us use their fields but we’re considering all options.” 

Adam Licea, Pali High Assistant Principal in Charge of Athletics, echoed that getting athletics up and running as quickly as possible was a high priority.

“Definitely—it was important to keep teams playing,” he said.

Girls varsity basketball coach Adam Levine revealed that he has been flooded with phone calls and texts from coaches offering donations, equipment and gym time.

“Every parent I talked to said this is the best news of the week when they found out we’d be playing,” Levine said. “We had Winter Break so we only got in one practice for Fairfax (a 33-point win). Brentwood School was generous enough to let us use their gym for practice since ours is off limits. The girls couldn’t wait to play!”

Boys pilot Jeff Bryant, who  took the reins from interim coach (and girls assistant LeBre Merritt) in May, is faced with a challenge he did not anticipate, but the culture of accountability he instilled from the start has given players resolve amidst a touch situation.

“The fire was a game changer for so many families… at first I stayed away fron talking basketball,” said Bryant, whose team has been practicing at Westside Neighborhood School in Los Angeles. “I hopped on Zoom with our guys and told them you need to be ready for changes on the fly.

One day were supposed to practice at 5:30 but we had to change it to 2 and all 16 guys showed up on time.”

Baseball coach Mike Voelkel said his program is in revival mode after several players lost their homes.

“First, we’re making sure everyone is safe and sound,” Voelkel said. “Second, we want to calculate the damage. An administrator went to the field, did a walk through and found that the field itself is in good shape so we’re optimistic about recovering in a speedier fashion. I’m not sure if the lights work yet but I want to thank the first responders for saving a lot of the surrounding structures at the field and on campus.”

City Section Commissioner Vicky Lagos has announced that due to the circumstances over the last several weeks the winter regular season will be extended one additional week for basketball and soccer. Schools will have the opportunity to make up games that were cancelled due to poor air quality as a result of the wildfires.

Games may be made up the week of February 10-16 as well as on Sundays.

Even the wrestling team has found a place to practice, a Brazilian jiu jitsu studio in West LA.

“How soon we’ll be back on campus I don’t know, but we need a home to come back to,” Montz added.

Despite Losing His Home He Decides to Continue Doing What He Loves

By STEVE GALLUZZO | Sports Editor

When he sadly lost his home in the Palisades Fire it would have been easy for Bud Kling to call it a career. He has been coaching the Palisades High tennis team for nearly five decades and is already the winningest prep coach in California history, racking up over 1,430 victories and 52 section titles.   

Yet, Kling is not quitting just yet, not after nearly all of his most cherished possessions were lost in the blaze, leaving him nothing but memories—and fond ones at that.

“It’s depressing,” he said after driving though his neighborhood and seeing utter devastation. There was not much left of his house on the corner of Oreo Place and Las Lomas, where he and his wife Cheryl had lived since 1982 (that includes two remodels) and raised two kids. “The chimney’s still there, the fountain and front steps made it, but that’s about it. It’s staggering—43 years worth of stuff up in smoke.”

An Olympic pin collector and trader, Kling has been to almost every Olympiad since 1984 and through the years he had acquired thousands of pins and 19 Olympic torches, a number that has been reduced to two­—one he ran with from the 2020 Winter Games in Salt Lake City and a replacement friends gave him from the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles.

“That was one of my hobbies I devoted my time to and when all that disappeared,” he confessed. “I was set to retire in November. I’d decided to coach the boys this spring and the girls in the fall but that was gonna be it. So this happening could end up delaying my retirement a few years.”

Many 77-year-olds have trouble getting out of bed in the morning, but not Kling. He remains as  active as ever, playing bocce and feeding balls to his players on the court at practice. In fact, he was playing a game of bocce at Veterans Gardens the morning of January 7 when he looked up to see a billow a smoke in the sky and rushed home.    

“By the time I got home there were already three news stations up there filing and we all sat and watched it for awhile. All of a sudden there was a huge wall of flame above Shadow Mountain and then I knew there was a chance it might reach us. Evacuation orders came at 3:10 and I was gone at 3:20.”   

“We basically grabbed two or three days’ worth of stuff, t-shirts, shorts, tennis shoes and our dog Leia and left,” said Kling, who did not know how serious the threat was at the time. “I lost the beamer but oh well. We had lots of family pictures on the fridge and I wish I’d taken a few seconds to sweep them into a bag.”

Among the treasure trove of personal items Kling left behind were some of his most prized possessions: all of his tennis trophies, Olympic torches,  hats, framed pin sets, signed posters, collectibles, UCLA paraphernalia, art, photo albums, most of his wardrobe and an autographed LA Kings jersey.    

While staying overnight at a friend’s place in Marina del Rey, Kling was able to monitor his house via satellite images on CAL FIRE – CA.gov and it was intact.

“The first day the fire burned in the shape of a lowercase ‘n’ so everything was okay, but then the wind changed and blew it over our area. We were holding out hope. A friend took a video the second day (Wednesday) and there’s a fire hydrant in front of our house but there was no water pressure so the people gave up. Had it worked our house may have survived. There are eight houses on our street and all but one of them burned down.”

In addition to losing his hobbies, Kling opted to keep coaching for another reason: he thinks back to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I remember how important it was that we keep the program going at that time and I felt this was a similar situation. I don’t want kids to be denied an opportunity to play. We had two boys transfer to other schools but everyone else stayed on the team. Obviously we can’t use the Pali Rec courts so we’ve been practicing at two parks close by on the westside. The parents have been super supportive through this and so has Mike Tomas at the PTC.”

Kling hopes that despite the added challenges the boys squad can continue its dynasty. The Dolphins have captured 15 consecutive section titles—the longest active streak by any team in the City. Since he took over the boys program during the playoffs in 1979, Kling has led Palisades to 31 boys crowns. He started coaching the girls in 1985 and has guided them to 21 titles in two stints.     

Kling has received numerous honors in his legendary career, including being named state coach of the year twice. Two and a half years ago he received perhaps his most prestigious accolade yet, being inducted into the Southern California Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in a ceremony at American Jewish University on Mulholland Drive in Bel Air. He was inducted into the City Section Athletics Hall of Fame in 2017 and many of his players have gone on to play at the college and even professional level. His teams have won four boys national championships and he has won at around a 90 percent clip over his storied career.

Kling started at Palisades as a substitute teacher in January 1977 and became a full-time staff member eight months later. Previously he had been coaching football at nearby University High. He has also coached varsity football, girls basketball and sponsored the cheer and  spirit squad. He attended Emerson Junior High in Los Angeles and earnedd his undergraduate and master’s degrees from UCLA in 1969 and 1972, respectively.

The list of All-CIF players he has coached is endless and includes Scott Davis, Danny Westerman, Artin Tafazoli, Jake Sands and now Lorenzo Brunkow, a UC Santa Barbara commit.

In 2019,  according to Cal-Hi Sports records, Kling reached a milestone with win No. 1,246—surpassing the career total of Robbin Adair, who coached the Coronado boys for 40 seasons and the girls for 33 before retiring in 2007 with 1,222 dual match victories and 1,245 overall. The state mark for wins in all sports (1,666) is held by water polo/swim coach Brent Bohlender of Modesto.

For perspective, Kling owns more City titles than all but eight schools in the section.

Kling’s adult children Alex and Ryan, both of whom played for him at Pali High, have set up a GoFundMe page for their parents, who are now living in a condo in the Marina Peninsula, having just signed a one-year lease.

Kling ran into several people he knew retrieving his mail at the post office branch in Rancho Park and missed the close-knit feel of the Palisades.

“This is uncharted water for us but we’re learning along with everyone else,” Kling said. “I try to keep a positive attitude and do whatever I can to help others. Who knows how long it’ll be before we can rebuild… two and a half, three years? We’ll see. I like where we’re living, it’s close to a Costco and a Trader Joe’s , but I miss the Palisades already. I have so many friends there and I’d never have to leave town. Everything I needed was there. We haven’t decided whether to rebuild, then sell it and buy something smaller but we’re going to rebuild and it’s highly unlikely that we wouldn’t live in it.”

By STEVE GALLUZZO | Sports Editor      

For Matin Farhangnia, the court is like a sanctuary, a safe haven where he can go to forget about the harsh reality of life. A senior guard on Palisades High’s varsity basketball team, he lost his home in the fire and is glad to have an activity to take his mind off it.

“It’s really hard right now,” he said. “For the first two days I watched the news day and night and I’ve never done that before. Being with friends and my teammates really helps.

Farhangnia left his house on DePauw in the Via Bluffs around 4 p.m. on January 7 after his dad saw fire on the street. “The next morning a neighbor sent me a picture of our block and there were no houses left,” he said. “We’re staying at an Airbnb in Santa Monica until we find a rental.”

Two members of the freshman team also lost their homes and another’s house is damaged but is still standing.  

“I was in my room and around noon my parents said ‘Look outside, we’ve gotta get out of here,” said Fynn Kassab, a Las Casas resident. “So we sealed off all our vents and grabbed a few things. Some of our stuff survived but basically everything’s gone.”

Fellow guard Malakai Rosen shared a similar experience when the flames approached his home on Edgar Street, one block away from Ronny’s Market.    

“I saw it coming maybe 10 minutes away up on a hill and the wind worsened it,” he said. “Only one house made it in our whole neighborhood.”

Forward Felix Brecker, who lives in the El Medio Bluffs above Pali High, was also home when the fire broke out. He said a lot of smoke got in the trees and the garage area was burnt but he found out later that people had saved it by stepping on embers.

Yet another teammate lost his home above the Alphabet Streets and transferred to another school.

Palisades’ freshman team won both of its games at a showcase Saturday in Woodland Hills, beating Beverly Hills 56-46 and then Oakwood 8527 behind 22 points from Levi Haloossim.

Ayla Teegardin, a junior wing on the varsity girls team whose house on Beirut Avenue in the Via Bluffs, where she had lived for five years, found out the first night her house  had burned down.

“I evacuated with three other people who lost their homes and I was with friends for the first four days after,” said Teegardin, whose whole family is staying at a hotel in Marina del Rey. “The first day we had a gym to practice in I was there. Basketball helps me get through the hard things in my life. It’s a way I can cope. It’s good for me to be on the court where all I can think about is basketball. ”

Coach Adam Levine said three frosh/soph and three JV girls also  lost their homes.

Five days before Ali Riley was to be married in Ventura County, the house she grew up in on Kagawa Street was burned down on the first night of the Palisades Fire. The international soccer star’s parents, John Riley and Bev Lowe, had lived there for 40 years and as they always do, they took the disaster in stride, happy to see their only child betrothed to her longtime boyfriend Lucas Nilsson, also a soccer player.        

Riley played multiple sports at St. Matthew’s, earned All-CIF honors at Harvard-Westlake High and enjoyed a stellar collegiate career at Stanford before gaining fame with Angel City FC and as captain of the New Zealand women’s national team.

*  *  *   *   *    

Kaitlyn Parcell, a Pali High soccer alum who nows plays professionally in Denmark, also lost her childhood house in the fire. Her father Don told the Post that she was safe in Huntington Beach with her boyfriend and her brother Max was also safe in San Diego.     

 By STEVE GALLUZZO | Sports Editor

For only the third time since since 1973, Riviera Country Club will not host the PGA TOUR’s Los Angeles-based event due to the wildfires in the Palisades and other Southland communities.

The Tour issued the following statement on January16:

The PGA TOUR’s focus continues to be on the safety and well-being of those affected by the unprecedented natural disaster in Greater Los Angeles. We are grateful for the life-saving efforts of first responders and the tireless work being done to put an end to the tragic wildfires.

In collaboration with Genesis, The Riviera Country Club and TGR Live, and out of respect for the unfolding situation, we have determined that The Genesis Invitational 2025 will be played at an alternate location the week of February 10-16. A venue update and additional tournament information will be provided in the coming days.

The PGA TOUR is identifying the most impactful ways the tournament can support the Los Angeles community and the ongoing relief efforts. We encourage fans to join the support at PGATOUR.com/SupportLA.

When the Palisadian-Post went to press Tuesday the PGA TOURwas considering moving the tournament to Torrey Pines Golf Course in San Diego, though the deal had not yuet been finalized.

The tournament used to be called the LA Open and has had numerous corporate names over the years. Riviera has hosted the event a total of 60 times, the first back in 1929. Prior to this year, the only times sicne 1973 that the event was not played at Rivera were 1983 (when it was moved to Rancho Park while Riviera was being groomed for the PGA Championship) and 1998 when it was played at Valencia Country Club in Santa Clarita while Riviera was being prepped for the U.S. Senior Open.

Tiger Woods, the 15-time major champion, now hosts the L.A. event and is winless in his career at Riviera. The Soutthern California native who started his pro career at Riviera and now lives in Florida,  said right now “there are so many other things that are bigger than that.”   

It’s just sad,” Woods added. “Max [Homa] and I have grown up there. We’re SoCal kids. To see what’s happened, I’ve known a couple of people who lost everything, so it’s just hard.”

Woods withdrew during the second round of last year’s Genesis at Riviera after suffering flu-like symptoms and getting treated with an IV bag. Japan’s Hideki Matsuyama rallied from a six-stroke deficit o win.

“As far as the Genesis we’re just trying to figure everything out and make sure everyone’s safe and we have meetings scheduled going forward,” Woods added. “As of right now, we’re not really focused on the event. It’s more about what we can do to help everyone who’s struggling, who’s lost homes and had their lives changed.”

Palisades High not only boasts the most successul athletic program in the City, having won more section titles than any school in the section, but it is also one of the best in terms of academics—a fact that was born out in the fall when three teams won Academic Excellence Awards for having the highest collective grade point average in their sport.

The boys water polo team’s streak of 11 straignt titles got snapped, but the Dolphins won the academic title  with a 3.53 GPA. The girls cross counry team also came in second in the Division I team standings but had a City-best 3.77 GPA. Finally, the girls golf team, which captured its fourth straight City title, also wound up the academic champion with an impressive 3.87 GPA.