All Posts – with Preview

  • 2020 Week 3: Cathedral No. 1 Here, No. 7 in California
    Comparisons are building for Cathedral. The Dons are a unanimous No. 1 in The San Diego-Union-Tribune poll and seventh for the second week in a row in the respected Cal-Hi Sports ratings. At No. 7, Cathedral is at its highest level in the Cal-Hi eye test rankings since the 2016 club finished fifth.  Coach Sean Doyle’s team ...
  • 2020: Active coaches with 50 or more wins through 2019
    Football season is just beyond the horizon in this chaotic year, but  many coaches are actively preparing for a January start (in the usual basketball season), including those who have reached 50 victories in their San Diego Section football careers. Earlier postings listed the Top 10 active football coaches in victories, and the all-time Top 27 ...
  • 2020: Bill Rainey, Crawford Football Star and CIF Track Champ
    Bill Rainey left with a couple championships when he graduated from Crawford High in 1962 and went on to the University of Southern California. Rainey, who passed away recently at his home in Seattle, was the San Diego Section football player of the year in 1961 and also was the first San Diego Section track-and-field champion ...
  • 1981: Population=New Leagues+New Names+More Games
    The CIF board of managers passed a resolution at the end of the 1980-81 school year that resulted in the dividing of three leagues and the board-approved addition of a 10th regular-season game. Cause and effect was County population, which had grown to 1.8 million in the 1980 census, with almost 1 million in the city. –The 10-team ...
  • 2020: Winningest Active Coaches, Through 2019
    Will there be a season? Even a truncated season with no playoffs and play restricted to league games will be cause for rejoicing, it says here. The state CIF is scheduled to make a decision July 20 on whether there will be games in the fall. Meanwhile, coaches and players wait. Active top 10 in career victories: NAME YEARS W-L-T PCT Rob Gilster 1989-2019 (31) 230-129-5 .639 Ron ...
  • 2020: Veteran Coaches Move On, Others Move Up
    Address changes and new names represent most of the news-making activity these days in the San Diego Section as it pushes on to a critical date and still looking for light at the end of the pandemic tunnel. The state CIF is scheduled to make a decision later in July on the 2020 future of football ...
  • 1951 Baseball & Track: Two Sports, Almost Two Champions
    Grossmont was the  champion in baseball.  San Diego High was the champion in track and field…for three days. San Diego lost a title after a review of film from the 440-yard race in the Southern Section finals revealed that Hal Espy had finished fifth and not fourth, taking away a point from the Cavemen and awarding ...
  • 1915-2020: Boys State Track and Field Champions
    They didn’t necessarily post the all-time San Diego County best in their event, or even their best, but 62 individuals have won 80 state track championships since the first meet in 1915. Pole Vaulter Bill Miller of San Diego, jumper Dokie Wiliams of El Camino, and weight specialist Darius Savage of Morse stand out as triple ...
  • 1974-2020:  Girls State Track and Field Champions
    It’s the time of year that University City’s Katrina Wright, Poway’s Ashley Callahan, and  members of Scripps Ranch’s 4×100 relay squad should be preparing to defend their San Diego Section championships Saturday and move on to the 102nd state track meet at Clovis next week. Like the prom and traditional graduation, they sadly won’t have the ...
  • 1929: Coronado Steals Some Hilltoppers Thunder
    San Diego High was on its fifth head coach in the last three seasons and found itself sharing  headlines for the first time with a team not from Long Beach. Coronado High, across San Diego Bay, was flexing muscles. Controversy would follow. John Perry left coaching after the 1926 season and was succeeded by John Hobbs in 1927 ...
  • 1940: Firestorm Over Oceanside Transfers
    Voices were raised, fists shook, and fingers pointed in a  conference room  at  the downtown YMCA on Oct. 24 in  a dustup over eligibility involving players who notoriously became  known as the “Adopted Football Stars.” Metropolitan League principals and coaches held a special meeting to consider the status of two “sensational Oceanside athletes,” Jimmy Bender and Bill ...
  • 1991-92: Legendary Pointers Coach Lee Trepanier Passes
    The basketball community lost a legend in August when Lee Trepanier, the retired, 56-year-old Point Loma coach, died in his sleep August 2, 1991. Trepanier, 56, had been battling stomach and esophagus cancer for two years. Trepanier learned of his cancer in August, 1989, but coached and taught math through the school year and retired as coach ...
  • 1991-92: “Indiana” Playoff System in Place This Season
    After restricting  playoff Divisions I and II to 16-team brackets the last two seasons, the San Diego Section board of managers went back to the ”Indiana” model of the 1987-88 and 1988-89 seasons in which all San Diego Section teams playing basketball were eligible for the postseason play. “I think I was one of the few ...
  • 2019-20 Week 18: La Jolla Country Day, Cathedral, Madison Girls Still Standing
    La Jolla Country Day and Cathedral are where they’re supposed to be, according to the seeds.  Madison is a welcome surprise. That’s the state of San Diego Section basketball today as the section’s final three go into tonight’s Southern California regional finals. The girls saved the day after the boys went out early, with a thud, despite ...
  • 2019-20 Week 17A: San Diego Contingents Stumble in Regional
    Super Tuesday was essentially a Super Wipeout for San Diego Section boys teams in the first round of the State Tournament’s Southern California regional. The girls did better. The guys posted a record of 3 wins and 14 losses, the young ladies 7-8, and the overall 10-22 was in grim comparison to the 16-14 record in ...
  • 2019-20 Week 17: Road to State Championships Starts Here
    No teams in the boys’ Open Division looks like a break for San Diego Section teams, which were assigned some  favorable seeds in other divisions of first-round play that gets under way in the Southern California regional tournament Tuesday night. Two girls teams are seeded No. 1 and have byes to the quarterfinals. Open Division La ...
  • 1990-91: And the Scoreboard Blinked…and Blinked.
    The three-point basket, which became a part of the game in 1986, continued to be refined and exploited and teams’ scoring points in the 80’s and 90’s was common.  One-hundred-point totals were at a record pace. Valhalla’s Mark Dillon set a state record with 145 three-pointers and tied the state record with 12 treys in a ...
  • 1990-91: Christian Girls Almost Go All the Way.
    Christian star Tiffany Stutz played with a re-injured ankle in the state championship game after the underdogs from El Cajon mounted a late-season run through the San Diego Section and state Division V playoffs. Erik Meek of San Pasqual, headed for Duke University, averaged  30.18 points, a figure topped only by Tony Clark’s 30.3 in 1987-88 ...
  • 2019-20 Week 16: Cathedral, La Jolla Country Day Win Open Titles
    CHAMPIONSHIPS SEEDS IN ITALICS OPEN BOYS Cathedral was hot. The No. 1-seed Dons had won 14 of their last 16, but No. 2 Torrey Pines was hotter, on a 15-game winning streak. It wasn’t about heat; it was defense. The Dons, who won the Division I championship in 2018-19,  trailed, 28-25, at halftime but broke to a 39-34 lead in ...
  • 2019-20 Weeks 11-18: Cathedral Wins Final Newspaper Poll
    This is the first The San Diego Union-Tribune Top 10 we’ve posted in several weeks and is final for the 2019-20 season, including San Diego Section playoffs. *Completion of San Diego Section teams’ participation in the CIF state tournament are included in the final ratings  by Max Preps and Cal-Hi Sports. First-place votes in parenthesis. *Well-regarded teams not ...