Editor’s note: Manny Alvarez is writing for OCVarsity about the loud, proud, outrageous, innovative and dedicated high school student sections during the football season. If you have suggestions for topics, please let us know: preps@ocregister.com or tweet @MAlvarez02.

The Student Section Report will be online each Wednesday during the football season.

OK, we need to change it up a bit.

It seems like we know the same four or five powerhouse student sections that are going to make it each Friday night as a finalist for the OCVarsity Student Section of the Week competition. We know this because we seemingly have picked the same group almost every week.

Villa Park Black Pack, Servite Asylum, Santa Margarita Eagles Nest, La Habra Clan and JSerra Lions Den.

We need some other student sections to step it up.

One way to show off your student section is by using the hashtag #ocvfans and sending videos and photos our way via Twitter. Also, send them early in evening. The earlier you send them, the better chance you have to get picked. I should know, I pick them.

One student section I wish I had seen earlier in the night last week is the Northwood Den. They not only showed their school spirit, but they wore purple for Domestic Abuse Awareness.

PURPLE OUT: DOMESTIC ABUSE AWARENESS#ocvfans #northwood pic.twitter.com/hnme09SLzT

— Sophie (@GrossmanSophie) September 15, 2018

A win-win and a tip of the hat to the Den.

Keep the photos and videos coming with the hashtag #ocvfans.

Now, how can you get your student section recognition? I’ll give you five examples from this past Friday from our Student Section of the Week Finalists.

LAST WEEK RECAP

I got to see the El Dorado Hawks Nest when the Golden Hawks took on Valencia a few weeks back. The Nest rocked it, but a tough loss to their rival is hard and the student section got quiet.

That happens, but they bounced back and so did their football team.

El Dorado took El Modena to the end last Friday and won the game with a field goal in the finals seconds. The Nest was loud and wild. We hope to see them here again and often.

The La Habra Clan took a dub and so did their team.

The Highlanders got their first win and we should expect them to eat a whole bunch of Ws from here on out.

The Clan has been consistent and loud. They have also been supportive during the four tough weeks for their football team. The tough part of the schedule is over and The Clan will start to roar more so than usual as Freeway League play begins next week.

JSerra made their return from their Los Angeles County road trip. A month away from their home, the Lions were welcomed by The Den. The Den didn’t disappoint. A loud and rowdy student section.

Good news for JSerra, they have one more trip to Los Angeles, well Bellflower to be exact, but they have three home games and a road game in Mission Viejo. Expect The Lions Den to be talked about more often.

The Servite Asylum showed up to Fred Kelly Stadium to cheer their Friars against Villa Park. Road Warriors! It was a sea of white and there was a special appearance by Clipper Darrell.

Win or lose, we always grind @clipperdarrell @MAlvarez02 @SoCalSections #ocvfans pic.twitter.com/7EzQhvqiKq

— The Asylum (@ServiteAsylum) September 15, 2018

The Asylum did their usual work. Now, they may not be thrilled about falling short for Student Section of the Week last week, but they will take the award again soon. It’s almost certain.

I like to share the wealth, so I try to avoid repeated winners, but it would have been tough to select a section over the Villa Park Black Pack, which mixed in the right ingredients.

The loud noise, the cheers, the large student section and the fantastic work on social media. They not only deserved it, they earned it.

Our BLACK PACK brought the SPIRIT AGAIN!! We are soooooo proud of our football team for the tremendous WIN over Servite tonight!!! Dance and Band had AMAZING performances tonight!! WE LOVE VP!!! #BLUEisBACK #ocvfans @MAlvarez02 pic.twitter.com/w9zn58TfXc

— Villa Park HS (@VPSpartan) September 15, 2018

In return, the Black Pack won the OCVarsity Student Section of the Week for the second straight week in a row.

It was a fantastic night for Villa Park, which defeated Servite 28-14.

Can The Black Pack make it three weeks in a row as Student Section of the Week?

It is possible. Yes, Villa Park has a road game this week, but it’s at El Toro. The Black Pack has traveled much farther than Lake Forest.

The Black Pack took a good number of students to Yucaipa, in San Bernardino County, on a Friday afternoon, on Labor Day Weekend.

To the student sections not feeling that I’m giving you recognition or OCVarsity is giving love, just follow what the Black Pack does and you’ll get noticed, I promise you.

THIS WEEK’S STUDENT SECTION BATTLES 

One game this week appears to be the top student section battle on both sides of the stadium – Villa Park at El Toro.

The Black Pack will be invading El Toro, but The El Toro Freak Show will look to protect their house.

We haven’t heard much from The Freak Show this season, so we hope to hear some noise from these Freaks.

San Clemente vs. Edison at Huntington Beach High (Thursday): Charger Nation will be roaring as San Clemente will be looking to end that awful losing streak. Edison will look for some motivation from the stands. Hopefully, the Charger faithful will deliver.

IMG Academy (Fla.) vs. Mater Dei at Santa Ana Stadium: How often do you get to see IMG Academy play your team? The Mater Dei Den should be rocking. For once, their football team will need them to cheer and send the Ascenders back to Florida with a loss.

Mission Viejo vs. Orange Lutheran at Orange Coast College: I wish I heard more about OLu Code Red, but in a big game against Mission Viejo, I’m expecting them to arrive. Code Red is a loud and insane student section when they show up in full. Hopefully that’s the case Friday.

Los Alamitos at Tesoro: It is a homecoming game for Tesoro, so the Titan Army should show up and rock the stadium, just like old times. The Titan Army was always a favorite of mine. The good news is that the Titan Army will show up and go crazy. The bad news is entering the parking for the game. Home field advantage for Tesoro.

Cypress at Capistrano Valley: The Cougar Den opened the Student Section season by being named the Student Section of the Week in Week 0. Capo Valley has been on the road for awhile, so the Den will break out of their cage for ther team’s return.

Also, my bosses at OCVarsity think it would be a great idea for a student section enter a stadium by breaking out of a cage. I’m giving you the idea Capo Valley. Just saying.

THE best intro in football.
The Tiger Cage pic.twitter.com/0CcemB5jSK

— Kyle (@KyleSports757) August 25, 2018

Bishop Diego at St. Margaret’s: I’m trying to think which condiment is going to win the halftime race. My choice is the bottle of ketchup. The Kitchen will be going nuts on Friday. This student section gets loud and shows their school spirit, but they also get very weird. I like weird, so win-win for the Tartans.

OAKLAND — Felix Peña’s performance on Wednesday night was Exhibit A about how difficult it is to pitch in the big leagues.

For three innings, Peña was as good as could be, but in the fourth inning he gave up six runs, which was more than enough to send the Angels on their way to a 10-0 loss to the Oakland A’s.

Peña retired the first nine Oakland hitters on 25 pitches, with barely even a ball hit hard. At that point, he looked like the guy who had a 2.76 ERA in his previous eight starts.

“In the first three innings he was doing a lot of the same stuff he’s been doing,” Manager Mike Scioscia said. “I thought he had a nice mix of pitches. In the fourth, he had trouble commanding counts and putting guys away and those guys, when they got a fastball to hit, hit it hard.”

Peña fell behind Nick Martini, 2-and-0, and then gave up a single. Peña’s first pitch to Matt Chapman was over the inner half of the plate, and Chapman shot it up the middle for a single.

Next, Peña actually threw a good changeup, down and away to left-handed hitting Jed Lowrie, who was still able to get good enough wood on it to drive it the opposite way, off the wall, for a two-run double.

Khris Davis then reached on an infield hit and Matt Olson walked, loading the bases.

Like he did to Lowrie, Peña went away to the right-handed hitting Stephen Piscotty. and he cranked it off the right-field fence, for a two-run double.

Peña then left a fastball over the middle to Ramón Laureano, who whacked it up the middle for an RBI single. After a sacrifice fly, the A’s had taken a 6-0 lead.

“The pitches weren’t quite exactly where he wanted them to be, and those guys got too much barrel on them,” Scioscia said.

The game spoiled a good streak for Peña, who is trying to establish a role for himself for 2019.

After being a reliever for the past few years, the Angels moved him into the rotation and he’s flourished. He’s switched from a four-seam fastball to a two-seamer, used his changeup more and at times flashed a dominant slider. Coming into the game, hitters had swung and missed at his slider 49.7 percent of the time, making it the 11th toughest slider to hit in the majors.

One night’s poor results notwithstanding, he’s still opened eyes with his 16 starts. He still has a 4.01 ERA in those games. He gave up 13 runs in two of his 83 innings as a starter.

Peña gave up seven runs in the first inning against the Seattle Mariners on July 29, and he bounced back and pitched well after that, which he took as encouragement after this outing.

“It was just a bad outing,” Peña said through an interpreter. “I put it behind me. The idea is to keep working hard and keep making progress.”

After Peña came out, another pitcher trying to get himself onto the 2019 depth chart had a rough inning.

Parker Bridwell gave up a three-run homer to Piscotty. Bridwell has now allowed 22 earned runs in 8-2/3 innings in his career against the A’s, while posting a 3.07 ERA in 120-1/3 innings against everyone else.

LOS ANGELES — It was 20 minutes after USC’s loss at Stanford earlier this month when Clay Helton faced a room of reporters outside the stadium. Helton first glanced at a sheet of paper lined with discouraging statistics before speaking into a pair of microphones.

The defeat was still fresh. The Trojans had scored their fewest points in a game in more than two decades.

But Helton did not emit frustration. Seated between linebacker Cameron Smith and wide receiver Michael Pittman, the Trojans’ coach first complimented his players before delving into the loss.

“I’m very proud of our kids and how they competed tonight,” Helton said. “I thought they competed like warriors.”

The postgame scene flashed a frequent side of Helton’s personality. Without fail, Helton has kept consistently upbeat, even amid losing stretches such as a currently wearying two-game skid – the first time since 2000 that USC has dropped consecutive games by double-digits.

Helton’s hope is to invigorate a 1-2 team and spark a turnaround with the consistent approach.

It worked before.

In 2016, the Trojans started 1-3, before winning nine straight games to finish 10-3 with a Rose Bowl triumph. The reversal of fortunes included Sam Darnold’s emergence as the starting quarterback.

When Helton took over as the interim coach for Steve Sarkisian in 2015, six days before facing rival Notre Dame, they were 3-2. The Trojans lost the rivalry game, but they won five of the next seven games to reach the Pac-12 championship game.

Helton’s unrelenting positivity with players, no matter the season’s circumstances, has been his enduring trait.

“It always came from my dad,” Helton said. “He always taught me that they’re going to react how you react. If you’re down and you look defeated, they’re gonna know.”

“If I had anything to do with helping him with that, then I guess I did my job as a dad,” his father, Kim, remarked in a phone interview from Florida on Wednesday.

Helton has often cited his father as a predominant influence, and he spent significant time around him during his formative years in coaching. When Kim was the head coach at Houston in the 1990s, Helton was first a backup quarterback for the Cougars, then later hired as an assistant.

In the following years, in particular since he replaced Sarkisian at USC, Helton has sought the upbeat approach as a method for rallying his team.

“Getting over adversity as an individual is one thing,” Kim said. “But to get over adversity when it’s a group involved, it’s a team involved, that’s a lot of personalities. I think Clay’s a very solid guy as far as the fact that it hurts when you don’t win. He knows it hurts. It hurts him. It hurts me. It hurts everybody. But the bottom line is, if he’s gonna fix it, you gotta get on about fixing it. You gotta get your butt off the ground, get a positive attitude.”

The circumstances are rare for Helton to lament past performances.

After the Trojans’ loss at Texas on Saturday night, a reporter asked Helton if he thought any players were underachieving.

Helton side-stepped the question. He instead raved about starting safety Marvell Tell, who remained on the field throughout the blowout.

“I thought he was just a warrior,” Helton said.

Most of his public comments contain hopeful refrains, part of a glass-half-full outlook.

“If he’s gonna panic, or he’s gonna be afraid, or act like they can’t do it, then how the hell are they gonna do it?” Kim said. “You’re never going to see that from him.”

Players remark they like the frequent encouragement.

“You gotta have a guy that’s able to keep your team’s head up,” senior tight end Tyler Petite said.

They also take criticism more seriously when it does arrive, Petite thought, such as Monday’s practice when Helton strived to spur the players on by dropping some rare expletives.

“He has pretty even-keeled demeanor,” Petite said. “He’s a pretty positive guy, but when he does get up in you, you better be listening and you better fix something.”

Those rare moments, though, are mostly in private, during team meetings and at practices.

Fans are instead left to mostly view the snapshots of Helton’s cheerful public demeanor, which has grown more wearing on fans through the first three weeks of this season. Many have expressed frustration with the slow start and an offense that has been muddied in struggles.

“There’s this kind of perception that there’s a softness,” said Ryan Abraham, the publisher of USCFootball.com, which includes a popular fan message board. “You don’t hear the fire and the brimstone, and I think they’re just kind of tired of it. It’s fine when you’re winning. but when you’re not, it’s an easy thing to point to.”

Helton, though, was resolved this week.

“I don’t want the mistake of being upbeat to say that I don’t have a care, a concern and an effort level to make sure that our seniors are not Pac-12 champions again,” Helton said.

QUICK HITS

Senior running back Aca’Cedric Ware has dealt with nagging knee pain this week, but he is expected to play Friday night against Washington State. … “It flared up earlier in the week, so we limited his reps,” Helton said after practice Wednesday. “He looked better today.” … Starting left tackle Austin Jackson returned to practice after he had been out Tuesday with an illness.

Annakiki may not be a household name, but Chinese designer Anna Yang clearly has the ear of the creative set.
Having dressed Beyoncé’s daughter Blue Ivy in a metallic ruffled dress for the Wearable Art Gala earlier this year, Yang has found another fan in British singer Ebony Bones, who attended the label’s spring show in Milan.
“It’s really nice to support female designers, and I think it’s intriguing that she’s done so well in Europe and she’s not European. It’s definitely a juxtaposition of different cultures: East meets West, and very fun as well,” said Bones, who wore Annakiki on the cover of her critically acclaimed recent album “Nephilim.”
The inspiration flows both ways. Yang’s spring collection, titled “Fashion Glitch,” channeled her love of electronic music with club-kid gear in shiny fabrics and fluo shades.
This was fashion for the Instagram age: think an acid green liquid-effect biker jacket with ruffled mariachi sleeves, or a holographic vinyl windbreaker and matching Bermuda shorts. The designer used studs and crystal beads to bedazzle everything from cut-off denim shorts to cropped jackets and roomy coats.
The Vegas vibe extended to an oversized black suit with rows of rhinestones in lieu of pinstripes. It made for an irreverent

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PARIS CENTRAL: For his debut show for Celine on Sept. 28, Hedi Slimane has chosen a powerful symbol of Paris: the Hôtel des Invalides, home to Napoleon’s tomb.
The designer posted an image on Instagram of a metallic structure being erected under the building’s gilded dome, which sits a stone’s throw from the Eiffel Tower, with the caption: “Show location Paris.”

It won’t be the first time Slimane has staged a display at the venue. It was also the setting for his fall 2014 men’s show for Saint Laurent.
Since he began to unveil his vision for Celine earlier this month, Slimane — who in recent years has been based in Los Angeles — has exalted the French heritage of the house.
He named his first handbag design for the label, the 16, after the location of the brand’s headquarters and atelier in a 17th-century mansion at 16 Rue Vivienne.

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MILAN — Picking up from a few looks teased in February on the fall runway, Fendi is rolling out a capsule collection based on the Fendi/Fila logo created by Instagram artist @hey_reilly. Called Fendi Mania, the capsule will hit stores on Oct. 16 with special events planned for New York, Beverly Hills, Paris, London, Moscow, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tokyo and Kuwait.
“We are obsessed with Fendi and we want to share this obsession,” said chief executive officer Serge Brunschwig with a laugh. “The mania started with the fall show, but now it’s a more expansive and important capsule targeting men, women and children [ages three to 12], all together for the first time.”
Brunschwig, who joined Fendi in February from Dior Homme, succeeding Pietro Beccari, said that after the FF Reloaded project and the brand’s revisitation of the FF logo, Mania was “an interesting way to express the Fendi identity. It’s a very luxurious collection, very creative and with plenty of our fur.”
The bold Fendi Mania logo appears in two color combinations, red with blue and yellow with white, also with graphic diagonal stripes and is combined with the FF logo on precious mink coats and reversible bombers. The Fendi Mania logo also

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COTERIE:
 
Brand: H-ology
Designer and founder: Heezu Hwang
Background: A graduate of Parsons School of Design, Hwang has held design positions at Michael Kors, Ralph Lauren, and G-III (Calvin Klein, Andrew Marc, Marc New York). She has designed handbags for the U.S. Polo Association, Carlos Falchi, CXL by Christian Lacroix and Catherine Malandrino, as well as Be & D. She launched her own handbag label in February.
Inspiration: “My inspiration is happiness,” said Hwang. She is offering two-sided leather clutches with two zippers, two-sided leather bags, and a camel cross-body cyclinder shape, which is easy and lightweight. A bestseller has been a square bag with flame handle.
Prices: Wholesale prices range from $90 to $200.
 
Brand: MA X 7 Fam, the 7 for All Mankind collaboration with Marques’Almedia
Designer: The Los Angeles denim company is doing a collaboration with Portuguese designers Marta Marques and Paulo Almeida of Marques’Almeida. Seven’s women’s designer is Jennifer Garcia and the design director for women’s is Larissa Noble.
Background: Marques and Almeida met while studying at Portugal’s CITEX fashion school and moved together to London to intern respectively at Vivienne Westwood and Preen. They also studied at Central Saint Martins and presented their final collection together. Marques’Almeida won the Emerging Womenswear Designer at

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PRESSING ON: Six months after the death of designer Amsale Aberra, the namesake company is moving forward with a new retail concept geared toward bridesmaids.
Starting Sept. 24, bridal parties can schedule appointments at the Amsale creative studio in New York’s garment district. Shoppers will find The Bridal Party at Amsale. The direct-to-consumer approach will give customers a full range of colors, fabrications, sizes, silhouettes and styles of both the Amsale and Nouvelle Amsale Bridesmaids collections. In step with the ever-increasing experiential options at retail, shoppers will have a behind-the-scenes view of the company’s Midtown design studio.
Neil Brown, chief executive officer of Amsale, said the introduction of The Bridal Party at Amsale is a “natural progression” for the brand as the retail landscape is changing. To that end, the way that brides and bridesmaids shop for dresses has “significantly shifted,” he said.
The more personalized shopping experience is designed to play up the attention to detail. There are more than 200 styles from both the Amsale and Nouvelle Amsale Bridesmaids collections. Clients will be encouraged to leaf through the numerous styles and try on different looks and take a close look at the fit of their selections.
Last year, the average bridesmaid spent

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The Ferrari Monza SP1 and SP2 are inspired by the barchetta racers of the ‘50s, but they pack a ton of modern muscle.

Tag Heuer releases new versions of its Aquaracer dive watch with bezels constructed from lightweight carbon.