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League championships can be forgotten amid the giant second season of playoffs. if a team has a pulse, no matter how few W’s and how many L’s, it’s most likely a postseason participant. But don’t pass that along to the San Diego Section’s regular-season winners. Players identify these achievements on their letter jackets, coaches enhance their resumes, ...

Big Brother split with Little Brother in two traditional games last week. Younger Helix made it a quarter century of continued success with a 25th consecutive win over older Grossmont, 29-14, and older Mira Mesa topped younger Scripps Ranch, 38-35. Helix now is 46-18-2 against Grossmont since 1951, when the fledgling school divided enrollment and geographic borders ...

Grossmont is going to beat Helix one of these years.  Maybe this week. The way things have gone the last 40-odd that’s a lukewarm maybe. The teams will meet for the 66th time with host Helix holding a 45-18-2 record in the all-time series. A victory for the Foothillers over their so-called younger sibling took place so long ...

Three neighborhood rivals with long histories resume their versions of trench warfare this week. Chula Vista and Sweetwater, 2.9 miles apart and the oldest schools south of the San Diego city limits, play for the 74th consecutive year in a chain that began when Chula Vista opened in 1947. The Spartans lead the Red Devils, 39-33-3, in ...

Another outstanding San Diego High team (27-4) was unexpectedly bounced from the playoffs but Grossmont won a Southern Section championship, joining the similarly successful 1951 squad. Only one team from each league was invited to the playoffs, so Hoover was a non-participant despite a record that was a reported 24-4. San Diego junior Deron Johnson was Southern ...

It didn’t have much influence on John Maffei’s Union-Tribune Top 10 poll through Week 7, but the Carlsbad-Torrey Pines game, a last-second, 34-33 win for coach Thadd MacNeal’s unbeaten Lancers, rates as the game of the year and easily the best since the pandemic. Sophomore quarterback Julian Sayin drove the Lancers 90 yards in the waning ...

The lower classifications held sway. Grossmont was the Southern Section team champion in Class B and most of the area’s future Class A champions were underclassmen, at least a year or two away. Hoover was enjoying a period of dominance in CPL dual meets, routing San Diego, 64 1/3-39 2/3.  Grossmont also defeated the Cavers, 79 5/6-24 ...

Carlsbad will be at  an interesting juncture as the regular season turns to the second half and the Lancers riding a 10-game winning streak. At 5-0, duplicating its record in the pandemic 2020 campaign and 5-0 starts in 2013 and 2007, coach Thadd MacNeal’s team will try to become  6-0 for the first time since 2006 ...

By three points, Carlsbad retained its lead over Cathedral, 226 points to 223 and will sit out this week with a bye. John Maffei’s weekly The San Diego Union-Tribune Top 10: First place votes in parenthesis.  Points on scale of 10 points to 1 point. RANK TEAM/RECORD POINTS PREVIOUS 1. Carlsbad 5-0 (13) 226 2 2. Cathedral 3-2 (11) 223 1 3. Lincoln 3-1 191 3 4. Mater Dei 3-0 167 4 5. Torrey Pines 3-1 133 6 6. Mission Hills 3-2 129 5 7 Scripps Ranch 4-0 82 7 8. Helix 3-1 55 10 9. Madison 3-1 52 8 10. Eastlake 3-1 33 9 OTHERS RECEIVING VOTES Mt. Carmel (4-0, 12 pts), ...

San Diego High, for decades the No. 1 team in Southern California baseball, was undefeated and favored to win an 11th CIF championship. Until…. The Hillers, as they were most often called (besides Cavemen, Cavers, and Hilltoppers) during the era, lost a quarterfinals playoff to a team it had beaten, handily, twice before. This San Diego team had ...

Cathedral coach Sean Doyle, whose team fosters a we’ll-play-anyone-anytime-anywhere mantra, gets another test this week against perhaps the most honored team in Califoria prep history. The Dons, recovering fast from their disaster in Week  2 at Corona Centennial, blitzed Helix, 52-0, last week and head North to play Concord de La Salle, which has a 4-0 ...

San Diego High bounced back with a 7-0 dual-meet record after a mediocre season in 1953 and finished fourth in the CIF Southern Section championships. It was a fitting farewell for coach Bill Patten, whose teams annually were among the best in Southern California since he became head coach in 1944. Patten’s teams posted a 61-6-1 record ...

The school named for Mabel E. O’Farrell was created in 1957 and opened in 1959 as a junior high, became a School of Performing Arts, and now operates under the tony brand of “The O’Farrell Charter School.” The Falcons got on the favored side of the scoreboard for the first time last week. After 18 consecutive losses ...

Not that they give a rip, but the Cathedral Dons’ 43-point, 57-14 defeat last week at Corona Centennial didn’t represent the worst loss in school history. More decisive was a 45-point loss, 55-10 to Sacramento-area power Folsom in 2014. Almost as painful was another 43-point reversal, 56-13 to Marian in the 2003 San Diego Section playoffs. Contributing ...

Hoover, led by high jumper-hurdler Bernie Nelson, stole thunder usually heard only by San Diego High opponents. The Cardinals were 6-0 in dual meets and along with Grossmont and Point Loma won a dual meet from the usually unbeatable Hillers. Nelson, who cleared 6 feet, 4 inches, was the County’s first state champion since Grossmont’s Hal Norris ...

Walt Harvey was a football and track coach and once confessed he “didn’t know anything about baseball.” Harvey was a 1936 Hoover High classmate and friend of Les Cassie, who was a successful baseball coach at San Diego High. Cassie didn’t know it but he deserved an assist when Harvey found himself coaching the varsity at ...

Cathedral and Lincoln, each with high aspirations, leave the sanctuary of comfortable surroundings and head North to face two of the state’s bests this week. Cathedral, No. 1 in San Diego and fifth in the state, as ranked by Cal-Hi Sports, takes on No. 8 Corona Centennial.  Lincoln, No. 24, goes to No. 10 Los Alamitos. Coach ...

Call it a return to (the new) normal. Football is back in real football time, but the Covid still looms, with the likelihood of canceled games and quarantines. And the pandemic, which reduced the 2020 season to an abbreviated schedule of 2021 spring games, probably was a factor in the turnover of coaches. There will be at least ...

Hoover, as newspaper accounts and the school yearbook indicated, might have been an undefeated, 12-0 champion. Published reports in The San Diego Union show that the East San Diego team played only a couple military teams in early-season March, emerging victorious in each. Other games may not have been reported. Schools were cutting back on travel because of ...

San Diego High, under second-year baseball coach Les Cassie, enjoyed its greatest success in a sport the Cavemen had dominated almost since the CIF Southern Section was formed in 1913. It won 35 games! And lost only two, a stunning won-loss percentage of .946! The historically powerful squads located on the beautiful campus at the South entrance to ...