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Von Jacobsen set the records and Crawford set the pace, but it was defense, played by the champion Helix Highlanders, which narrated the season. “I can’t understand why more teams don’t stress defense,” wondered Bob Speidel, coach of the 23-4 Scots, who parlayed playing without the ball to drive opponents into submission, as witnessed by the  ...

Christian, El Centro Central, Francis Parker, Kearny, and Torrey Pines continue to set the pace, each with a 6-0 record.  Seven teams, Valhalla, Patrick Henry, Ocean View, El Cajon Valley, Hoover, Mabel O’Farrell, and Clairemont, are setting a reverse pace, each without a win. La Costa Canyon, which I had voted as the top team in ...

Arthur (Hambone) Williams was 28, out of college for four years but still hoping to get a shot. San Diego sportsman Bob Breitbard had recently been awarded an expansion franchise in the National Basketball Association for the 1967-68 season and Breitbard, after a visit from Merrill Douglas, who was Williams’ coach during Hambone’s two brilliant seasons ...

Forty-five teams begin league play this week.  Twenty-three more will commence next week, and 22 already have started down that road as the season reaches Week 7 and the final month of the regular season. It seems that every team in the San Diego Section will make the playoffs.  Although that is not the case it ...

Nels Olsen stood at the free throw line, shooting one and one, the crowd screaming, challenging the San Diego High forward to falter in the charged atmosphere and din of the Lincoln gymnasium. San Diego trailed, 68-67. Two seconds remained in the game. Olsen drained the bottom of the net with each free throw attempt.  The Cavers thought they ...

Of the 1,694 players on active NFL rosters on Kickoff Weekend earlier this month, 18 were from San Diego Section schools, six more than in 2017. (There is an error in the table below.  Alex Mack did attend San Marcos High, in Santa Barbara, not at our local San Marcos). Helix and La Costa Canyon were among ...

Call it the Battle of Banner Grade, because a chunk of the 32-mile trip from Julian to Borrego Springs on California 78 traverses the circuitous path of the vintage East County road, past the 19th Century gold-mining community of Banner, until the final stretch of the approximately 50-minute drive turns to County Road S2. Julian Union ...

Helix and Cathedral collide this week while La Costa Canyon and Torrey Pines are on a collision course. The Cathedral Dons, 5-7 last season and missing stud running back Shawn Poma much of the year, made a statement last week with a 42-21 win over high-powered Gardena Serra, the state’s 10th-ranked team, according to Cal-Hi Sports.  Poma, ...

San Clemente has become the Avocado League’s weathervane. La Costa Canyon, second ranked in this week’s Union-Tribune poll, will be the third Avo team in successive weeks to take on the Tritons, a respected Orange County entry just a few right or left turns and a modest hike up Interstate 5 from Oceanside (23 miles), Torrey Pines ...

Metropolitan League coaches doubled as classroom or physical education teachers, began their school years with football practice in early September, jumped into winter basketball, and followed with baseball or track in the spring. That’s the way it was done at the area’s smaller schools. Year after year. So it was a little surprising when a line in ...

How decisive was top-ranked Helix’ shocking, 43-3 defeat at San Bernardino Cajon last week? Two-hundred, sixty-nine games decisive. You have to go back to the third contest of the 1996 season, a 41-0 Highlanders loss to El Camino, to find a more conclusive result. Only four others in the school’s storied, 68-season, 691-game history—41-0 to San Diego ...

Helix is number one, at least for the opening week. The Highlanders received 14 first-place votes and 262 points from the panel of 30 in the first Union-Tribune football poll coordinated by veteran prep honcho John Maffei. The Scots also were number one in the final 2017 vote: Rank Team 2017 Points Previous 1. Helix (14) 13-2 262 1 2. Torrey Pines (3) 7-5 236 4 3. Cathedral (8) 5-7 221 NR 4. Mission Hills (3) 12-1 198 2 5. Madison (1) 8-3 189 8 6. La Costa ...

It was a remarkable spring. San Diego High won its first outright, state  championship since 1929 and the Hilltoppers and Hoover Cardinals finished 1-2 in the team race in the CIF Southern Section finals. It stood to reason that since San Diego also was team champion in the five-star Southern Counties’ meet at Huntington Beach in March ...

Ray DeBolt of Granite Hills, a new school at the east end of Madison Avenue in El Cajon, won the San Diego Section mile championship on May 27, 1961. The victory gave DeBolt, who passed away in the recent months in Reno, Nevada, at age 75, the distinction of being the first section champion in his ...

Mystery surrounds Hoover’s basketball season. Someone, call the Shadow. The mythical sleuth, introduced to American radio audiences early in the decade, had gained so much popularity that a movie “The Shadow Strikes”  was released in 1937. The Shadow‘s alter ego Lamont Cranston, or more important, an enterprising newspaper reporter, would have determined why, after Hoover celebrated  the Coast ...

Class B teams were not junior varsities and not necessarily inferior to Class A (varsity) clubs. The B designation was based on exponents, which combined height, weight, and age.  It was not unusual for seniors to play on B squads. Under Coach Bruce Maxwell, Hoover ruled the B world, many times playing the feature, late game of ...

The best teams could be very disappointing, which is why a group of pickup-playing hoopsters almost stole the show. Eight Grossmont High students, with blistered feet, sore arms and legs, and with a burning desire to  get home and sleep, claimed a record for the longest game, ever. Basketball historians would argue the point, but not in ...

Some of the best performances by San Diego Section athletes at the 100th state track championships last week at Clovis Buchanan were provided by those who should be back for another shot in 2019. Alysha Hickey, second in the high jump at 5 feet, 8 inches, and the first area champion since 2015 with a 19-9 ...

The San Diego Section has not had an individual champion in the state meet since 2015 or a double winner since 2012. Eastlake’s Jalyn Jackson has a chance to reverse the trend this week in the 100th championships at Clovis Buchanan High. Jackson, fourth in the long jump and second in the triple jump in 2017, is ...

There would be raised eyebrows and at least one exclamation of “Really?” and another of “No Way!” should a copy of Charles Byrne’s Jan. 4, 1940, article in The San Diego Union have been placed in a time capsule and opened 20 years later. Basketball was evolving and moving indoors, although the game still was a ...