All Posts – with Preview

Sa’de-Wiley Gatewood is back in the hunt. The Victory Christian coach sends her No. 1 seed against No. 4 Playa del Rey St. Bernard Thursday in a Southern California Division VI-AA semifinals game at the Knights’ Chula Vista venue. The winner will meet  the survivor of he Corcoran-Los Angeles Franklin game for the championship. Four teams are entered ...

Seventeen teams begin one-week quests of Southern California championships and almost all eyes will be on the 29-0 Torrey Pines Falcons, seeded No. 1 in the Open Division and with a quarterfinals bye. Corona Centennial, which the Falcons defeated at home early in the season, 65-62, bypassed a chance to  turn the tables on  coach John ...

Cathedral upheld the honor of No. 1 seeds and defeated No. 3 Bonita Vista, 55-49, in the Open Division and erased the memory of two losses to the Barons in the regular season. It was not a happy ride for several of the favored seeds in the girls’ San Diego Section playoffs.. Nine upsets, or surprises, took ...

Unbeaten and 29-0 Torrey Pines continued its march toward a place where no San Diego Section boys team has gone, winning a championship in the largest division in Southern California (the 1935-36 San Diego High team won the Southern Section title but had a loss in a 15-1 season; the 1944-45 Hoover team won the ...

The typically good baseball played in the area was augmented by another stable of outstanding players. Pro teams signed dozens  and several made it to the big leagues: Dave Duncan and Eddie Herrmann were the first two of the eventual five catchers from Crawford to reach the top.  Others included Lincoln’s Lou Marone. St. Augustine’s Bob Spence, ...

We owe an apology to the starting five, Charlie Buchanan, John Walters, Bill Canning, John Schroeder, and Rick Eveleth, and coach Bill Reaves. They were the major players for another team that posted an undefeated regular season, the 1963-64 La Jolla Vikings, who were 26-0. We omitted the Vikings in our post last week. Rick Eveleth, 6 foot, ...

Torrey Pines and San Marcos are on the cusp of becoming the fifth and sixth teams in San Diego County history to complete undefeated regular seasons. (Editor’s note:  Challenges and additions to this stat welcomed.) Hoover was 24-0 in the 1959-60 regular season and got to the Southern California semifinals before bowing to Anaheim, 39-34.  Mount ...

Torrey Pines this week ranks second in one California poll, third in another, and a unanimous  No. 1 in San Diego. John Olive , who became head coach at Torrey Pines before the 1997-98 season and whose teams have averaged 23 victories a season, commands a Falcons squad that has reached this juncture of the season ...

Coach John Olive may have passed the word around the Torrey Pines campus on Del Mar Heights Road:  Do not even think about an undefeated season. The coach would plead, “It’s too early.” Or, “We’re just thinking about our next game.” But three impressive victories last week have put the Falcons at 19-0, with a No. 2 ...

Track and field, long a Southern California stronghold in San Diego, celebrated some powerful performances. Lincoln lost only a late-season, nonleague dual meet at Helix, 57-47, won its third straight Eastern League dual meet championship and the San Diego Section title for the second year in a row, and contended for the state team championship. The Hornets’ ...

Crawford was emerging as a legendary power and would appear in the San Diego Section championship game six times, winning four, by the end of the decade. The Colts’ coach was Bill Sandback, a hockey-playing Minnesota transplant who, after seeking more agreeable weather, moved west, and taught one year at Memorial Junior High before becoming the ...

The innumerable number of games and points and lack of sustained record keeping, or reporting, in earlier years make basketball a most challenging  sport when it comes to posting stats of the “most”. The table below, which begins decades after the game came to San Diego, lists an evolution of  individual high scoring for one game.  ...

RANK TEAM RECORD POINTS LAST WEEK 1. Torrey Pines 16-0 (10) 127 1 2. Cathedral 6-0 (2) 112 2 3. San Marcos 15-0 (1) 109 3 4. Santa Fe Christian 10-2 89 4 5. Carlsbad 10-2 71 6 6. El Camino 11-3 57 5 7. St.. Augustine 6-2 53 8 8. Orange Glen 14-2 30 9 9. Mission Hills 9-4 29 7 10. Mater Dei 5-1 21 10 Others receiving votes: Coronado (11-3, 9 points),  Bonita Vista (5-3, 4). First-place votes in parenthesis..  Points awarded on scale of 10 down to 1. Poll voters:13 sportswriters, sportscasters from around San Diego County. John Maffei, San Diego Union-Tribune. Aaron Burgin, fulltimehoopos.com. Terry Monahan, Steve Brand, Union-Tribune correspondents. John ...

San Diego Section teams have been staying close to home because of the pendemic, but the season is in full swing with usual powers Cathedral and Torrey Pines almost neck and neck. San Marcos and a few others appear to be lying in the weeds. Coach John Olive’s Torrey Pines Falcons managed to get in a ...

Strength in the lower divisions, boys’ and girls’, continued to be the signature of San Diego Section teams. The Christian girls followed the sensational mid-1980s stretch of four state championships by Point Loma by reaching the state Division IV championship game for the fourth season in a row. Lincoln boys won the state D-IV title and were ...

The world pandemic almost  brought the San Diego Section to its knees, but the governing athletic body survived, thanks to determined coaches, players, and administrators.                      Thirteen of the 96 schools fielding varsity teams were able to play a maximum six games, as mandated by the ...

The San Diego Union-Tribune‘s final football poll in shortened season. First place votes in parenthesis.  Points on scale of 10 points to 1 point. RANK TEAM RECORD POINTS PREVIOUS 1. Cathedral 5-0 170 1 2. Carlsbad 5-0 153 2 3. Mission Hills 5-0 136 3 4. Lincoln 4-1 105 7 5. La Jolla 5-0 102 6 6. Eastlake 4-0 57 9 7. Granite Hills 5-1 54 5 8. Ramona 5-0 50 8 9. Poway 5-0 43 NR 10. St. Augustine 2-2 36 4 Others receiving votes:  Torrey Pines (3-3, 19 points), Otay Ranch (3-1), Sweetwater (5-0, 3 each), Mater Dei (4-2, 2), El Centro Central (5-0, 1). Voting panel:  Seventeen sportswriters and ...

A couple newcomers led the shouting in a last hurrah for San Diego. Area schools were preparing to leave the Southern Section after 47 years and embark on their own, 31 institutions forming the San Diego Section in the next school year. Clairemont and El Capitan, numbers 30 and 31, ignored usually unsuccessful results for start-up programs. Clairemont’s ...

CIF bosses approved a fifth division for playoffs. “Those who worried that five playoff divisions would take some of the glitter off league races needed to be in the stands at Christian and San Diego High this past weekend,” wrote Steve Brand before the start of the postseason. “When Christian beat Our Lady of Peace there was ...

Point Loma canceled its season, hours after the story below was published. Joel Allen, who quarterbacked Christian to a Division IV championship in 2002 and created a brilliant coaching record at The Bishop’s (11 seasons, 100-39-1 record, .739 winning percentage) had stepped down. Allen was going to go into business with his brother and was stepping back, ...