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Ron Hamamoto’s crashing the top five in San Diego Section coaching ranks wasn’t the only significant career achievement last week. –Grossmont’s Tom Karlo became the 42nd to reach 100 wins. Hamamoto, whose Monte Vista squad defeated Chula Vista, 34-17, now has 229 victories, tying the 35-season mentor with Morse’s John Shacklett, who won 229 at Morse from ...

Sweetwater, the San Diego Section’s International team. After trips to Hawaii and Canada in recent years, Coach Gary Zarecky’s Red Devils visited the Continent this season. They played four games in Yugoslavia after Christmas, meeting some of that basketball-savvy nation’s top junior teams. The roadrunners from National City also found time to set a San Diego Section record ...

Sweetwater fired a season-opening shot to remember on Nov. 21, exploding for 136 points against Coronado in the first game (Seach 1984-85: Zarecky’s Red Devils Runnin’…andTravelin’), but the Red Devils came up short again in the playoffs as Poway, now a team of mostly juniors, ran away with the San Diego Section 3-A title. Other moments  ...

Half the regular season is complete for all but a handful of teams and Helix has emerged as the front runner for the longest postseason. The Highlanders arrived at this juncture after having beaten No. 2 Cathedral and No. 3 St. Augustine, which followed  a surprising, overtime loss to Utah’s Herriman West Herriman. The loss to Herriman ...

Oceanside and La Costa Canyon set a record when they played four overtime periods last week. Somewhere Bennie Edens was smiling. The late coach at Point Loma was instrumental in the city schools’ adopting overtime sessions as a way to solve the inconvenience of tie games in 1975. The entire San Diego Section agreed in 1976 to use ...

Sweetwater coach Gary Zarecky took over a bottomed-out program in 1972-73 that was 2-22, 6-20, and 1-23 in the three previous seasons and proceeded to go 6-19, 1-23, and 11-15. In Zarecky’s year four the Red Devils saw light at the end of the tunnel and fast-breaked past it. Since 1975-76 Sweetwater is 196-54, a .772 winning ...

The future was almost now for Poway. Coach Neville Saner’s starters included three sophomores, Dominick Johnson, Judd Buechler, and Andy Byrne, and junior John Colborne. The young Titans posted a 21-5 record and won the San Diego Section 3-A championship but were sidelined, 79-60, by Riverside John North in the Southern California Regional. They would be back. There was ...

Thirteen players on opening week NFL rosters made their bones on fields of the San Diego Section: NAME HIGH SCHOOL COLLEGE TEAM POSITION Jamal Agnew Point Loma San Diego Lions Cornerback Jake Bailey Santa Fe Christian Stanford Patriots Punter Joe Cardona Granite Hills Navy Patriots Long Snapper Royce Freeman Imperial Oregon Broncos Running Back Tony Jefferson Eastlake Oklahoma Ravens Safety Jordan Miller Oceanside Washington Redskins Cornerback Tim Patrick University City Utah Broncos Wide Receiver David Quessenberry La Costa Canyon San Jose State Titans Tackle Scott Quessenberry La Costa Canyon UCLA Chargers Center Kenny Stills La Costa Canyon Oklahoma Texans Wide Receiver Levine Toiolo Helix Stanford 49ers Tight End Fred Warner Mission Hills Brigham Young 49ers Linebacker Damian Williams Mira Mesa Oklahoma Chiefs Running Back SCOTS STEP ...

Corona Centennial did not make an appearance at Cathedral last week until less than 3 minutes before kickoff. The Huskies did not engage in the usual, pregame warmup. “Gamesmanship,” observed Don Carey, retired, longtime NFL official who now scouts high school officiating crews. If that was the late-arriving Riverside County powerhouse’s message to the Dons it seemed to ...

Cathedral Catholic takes on visiting Corona Centennial Friday night in a battle of elite privates and publics. Coach Sean Doyle’s private-school Dons defeated Arizona’s big one, Scottsdale Saguaro, 18-10, last week at home in the final of the Honor Bowl tripleheader. Public school Centennial, after a 42-12, opening-game loss to national No. 1 Santa Ana Mater Dei, ...

The girls were playing for a state playoff berth for the first time… …before the start of their regular seasons. That’s because the regular season still was in the spring in the San Diego Section, while the rest of California (and most other places where there is a court and a ball) plays basketball in the winter. Patrick ...

Torrey Pines’ 6-foot, 11-inch Chris Dudley was among the San Diego Section’s leading scorers with 438 points and a 16.8 average. A fine season  and a productive four years at Torrey  but not a blueprint for the future. The future stretched…and stretched. Dudley went on to play four years at Yale University and then embarked on a National ...

The game still was played from December until early March, but San Diego Section basketballers seemingly were playing more and scoring more. Ninety points, once considered elite, had become almost routine. 100 points no longer was surprising. There were more highs than lows but some stunning legislative moves captured the headlines, as usual caused by a “dreaded ...

There would be state basketball playoffs this season and Morse liked its chances to represent the San Diego Section. Ray Epton, whose 25.0 average at Madison in 1981-82 was highest in the San Diego Section, had transferred to the school on Skyline Drive, where Epton joined 6-foot, 7-inch preseason all-America Lawrence West, 6-6 Shawn Bell, and  ...

Westbound traffic will pick up on Escondido’s Valley Parkway Friday night. A neighborhood bragging rights game is scheduled when revitalized Orange Glen motors West from the eastern edge of town on the old thoroughfare to visit big brother Escondido High. They’re only 4.5 miles apart, but the visiting Patriots and host Cougars haven’t met since 2015. Fortunes have ...

Football, which used to open with 90-degree practices under blazing Labor Day suns, is back with a now usual berginning in August’s semifinal week. The dates have changed, but not the weather. Cathedral is the San Diego Union-Tribune voting panel’s No. 1-ranked team in the first weekly poll. Dons coach Sean Doyle, who should become the 11th coach ...

“I’m confused,” said Sweetwater coach Gary Zarecky. “I’m baffled,” added the Red Devils mentor. Sweetwater had just beaten Castle Park, 94-11, in a Metropolitan Mesa League game, which followed an earlier, 106-37 Sweetwater rout of the Trojans. What made Zarecky (Zar-skee) figuratively scratch his head was that the host Trojans attempted only five shots from the field…and made ...

Local teams were just that, local. That’s because San Diego Section bosses, most of whom did not  know if the ball was made of leather or composed of rubber, continued to defy the state CIF. –For the first time in the history of the game in San Diego County, going back at least 60 years, there was ...

Records are made to be broken, but it took 11 years, until Jan. 23, 1981, for  Bill Walton and Helix  to surrender the San Diego Section’s signature team scoring achievement. Helix slammed Mount Miguel, 127-31, in the 1969-70 season and the Highlanders’ record seldom was in trouble, other than a couple 122-point assaults by free-wheeling small ...

Moments from the season: 11/29/80 Nine players returned to the defending champion and preseason No. 1 Patrick Henry Patriots, including 1979-’80 San Diego Section player-of-the-year Steve Brown, fellow all-CIF selection Billy Washington, and Tom Dobyns, son of a 1957-58 Hoover standout. Five players also moved up from a 19-2 junior varsity. Coach Alan (Fritz) Ziegenfuss, offspring of long-time ...