Christensen leaves Peninsula’s football program after three seasons

According to the Daily Breeze, coach Michael Christensen was recently released from Peninsula’s football team as head coach. Though he will continue to work on campus teaching the Sports Medicine class and as a physical education instructor, he will no longer head the football team.

“Right before the holidays [Principal Mitzi] Cress called me in,” Christensen said. “With [everything that happened], I think she wanted to rejuvenate [the program] and start fresh, so she decided to make a change and try to get a [different] or more local coach to try to [bring up] numbers.”

Christensen first came to head the team in 2013, having previously coached at Carson and South Torrance high schools; he led Peninsula for two full seasons and was near the end of his third when the remainder of the 2015 season was forfeited due to numerous injuries and a depleted roster.

“[The forfeit of the final three varsity games] was a little disappointing. Over the past three seasons, we have done so much to make it attractive for kids to play [football]. From all the new equipment to the new locker room to the new offices, we have everything,” Christensen said. “It has been a lot of work by a lot of people, not only myself.”

Although Christensen is unsure of the high school’s plans to reinvigorate the football program, he believes that there are new strategies being considered. He thinks that one of the ideas is to move the program out of the Bay League, though it would not be without consequences; he foresees difficulties with that course of action.

“It looks very unlikely that there will be any re-leaguing for the next two years,” Christensen said.
He also mentioned that before leaving the program, he and Athletic Director Wendall Yoshida changed the preseason schedule to include more nonleague teams.

“Our kids give great effort [and they always] play hard, but there are limitations and it is not fair for them sometimes to play against some of the schools that are just better [each week],” Christensen said. “It starts to wear them down. I think it is going to help a lot because our kids need success.”

Christensen, who finished his run at Peninsula with a record of 9-21, intends to stay in the district but also hopes to coach elsewhere.