The view from the insider

Varsity Times Insider is The Times’ newest blog and a source for observations, news and game coverage. It has been up and running since the season’s start and can be found at latimes.com/highschool.

Here are some excerpts we like to call “Best of the Blog”:

Newhall Hart’s 31-28 victory over Canyon Country Canyon on Johnny MacArthur’s 43-yard field goal as time expired was like a Disney movie ending. MacArthur is a top golfer and soccer player who was told by most everyone that he’d be nuts coming out for football for one year and risking injury. He’d never even tried a field goal until Friday night.

FROM SAN FERNANDO VALLEY/NORTH

“Merry Christmas,” a Hart fan told Coach Mike Herrington afterward in the rain.

Thanks to a 29-yard field goal by Vincent Alvarez in the fourth overtime, Santa Barbara not only picked up its fifth victory of the season with a 23-20 victory over Ventura Buena on Friday, but also opened Channel League play with a win -- something the boys on the so-called California Riviera haven’t done since 2001, the year of their last league championship.

Now I’m not going to say anything crazy like Santa Barbara is going to give St. Bonaventure, this week’s opponent, a run at the league title or anything, but this team is pretty darn good.

FROM ORANGE COUNTY

D.J. Shoemate made his debut Friday as a running back -- and nothing but a running back -- for Anaheim Servite. . . . He may be one of the most electrifying players in Orange County -- or all of the Southland for that matter -- and he looked at home in Servite’s 32-15 Trinity League victory over Santa Margarita at Brea Olinda High.

Servite has a terrific offensive line, including USC-bound left tackle Matt Kalil, who played in his first game since suffering third-degree burns on his arm and shoulder a few weeks ago. So why not use it?

-- Martin Henderson

FROM THE CITY SECTION

Milton Knox didn’t spend much time Saturday celebrating the fact he is now the City’s all-time rushing leader, a record he secured in Lake Balboa Birmingham’s 54-8 victory over Chatsworth. There’s another game to play, a season to continue. . . . But there was a little afterglow.

“It’s nice to have,” said Knox, whose 186 yards against Chatsworth lifted his career rushing total to 5,446, surpassing Jerry Brown’s 5,387 yards for Woodland Hills Taft from 1992 to 94.

“But we have other things to focus on. After high school, I’ll enjoy it.”

FROM LOS ANGELES COUNTY

Emotions ran high in the San Gabriel Valley League opener between Compton Dominguez and Cerritos Gahr on Friday night, especially once Maurice Simmons, the Dons’ standout senior linebacker, broke his left leg early in the game.

After Simmons was taken away in an ambulance, his younger brother, junior linebacker Marquis Simmons, was inspired to play perhaps his best game of the season, pursuing Gahr quarterback Corey Nielsen relentlessly and generally causing havoc in the Gladiators’ backfield all night. (Dominguez won, 49-0).

FROM THE SAN GABRIEL VALLEY

Before the game I asked Covina South Hills Coach Steve Bogan how many times he watched the Hacienda Heights Los Altos-La Canada St. Francis game film.

“A lot,” he said.

The great thing St. Francis did against Los Altos, I told him, was to cut the edges -- the Friars did not allow Bryce Mahmud-McBride to get to the outside.

“Well, did we cut the edges?” Bogan jokingly asked after South Hills’ 35-21 victory over Los Altos.

-- Jaime Cardenas