Dr. Danny Friedland died the night Falcons played rival La Costa Canyon last year. The Falcons meet LCC on Thursday, and Dylan Friedland will be on the field with his friends
The night of Oct. 29, 2021 — hours after Torrey Pines High beat archrival La Costa Canyon, claiming the surf board awarded to the winning football team — Falcons wing back Dylan Friedland’s best friend passed away.
For a few hours a day, football was where Dylan could be with friends and teammates and take his mind off his father. What made things worse on the night Dr. Friedland passed, Collins said, was that Dylan had a sprained ankle and couldn’t play against La Costa Canyon.Despite an ankle injury and playing with a screw in his wrist from an early season injury, Friedland will play.“Dyl isn’t a great player, but he’s a good high school football player, a major contributor,” Collins said of Friedland, a runner and receiver in Torrey Pines’ Wing-T offense who has 44 carries for 203 yards and a pair of TDs this season.
“It would have been easy for Dyl to quit, but he wants to live life like his father wanted. All we can do as Dyl’s friends is support him, lift him up, be positive.Dr. Danny Friedland was born in South Africa, where he played cricket and tennis. He fled the country to escape apartheid and found his way to the United States. He earned a BS from the University of Cape Town and graduated from the UC San Francisco School of Medicine in 1992. He did his post-doctoral fellowship and residency at UCSF.
“I’ve never experienced anything like Dyl is going through. So it’s hard because we want to support him, but we know at times he needs his space.Friedland’s 23-year-old brother, Zach, graduated from Torrey Pines and UC Santa Barbara. A lacrosse player in high school, he had a chance to play at Georgetown, but had suffered a concussion and didn’t want to risk further injury. Zach now works lives in Los Angeles and works in the financial field.