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The sportswriters and broadcasters and CIF power ratings maven John LaBeta have spoken and there is some agreement. Cathedral, Rancho Bernardo, and Helix, 1-2-3 in The San Diego Union final regular-season poll, are the top three seeds in the Open Division playoffs, which begin Nov. 18 with quarterfinals play. But there were some surprises and shock waves in other ...

A celebration of Don Donnelly’s life will be held at the La Mesa Community Center on Nov. 14 from 2:30-5:30 p.m. Donnelly, 87, passed recently after a lifetime of athletics and coaching, principally track and field and cross country. A 1947 graduate of Hoover High, where he played football and competed in track, Donnelly got into coaching ...

Hoover did it. The Cardinals scored, not once but twice, in a 49-14 loss to Patrick Henry. Hoover had not even registered a blip in its first eight games and was closing in on a record set in 1976 by San Diego Southwest. The Southwest Raiders were blanked on the field in a 0-9 season in 1976 but scored ...

Take a good look at this week’s Union-Tribune Top 10 poll.  It won’t be the same next Tuesday and likely will change even more after the last of several blockbuster matchups take place 10 days from now on the final Friday of the regular season. THIS WEEK   No. 1 Cathedral (8-0) meets Western League rival No. 6 St. ...

Six teams are  7-0 (Calvin Christian is 6-0)  and the trend figures to continue as San Diego Section clubs head into the stretch run of the regular season. The Bishop’s (7-0) visits La Jolla Country Day (6-1) in the feature game involving one of of the unbeatens. The Knights, who have bigger things in mind, can salt away away their second ...

It’s not a stretch to declare that this was the year San Diego, the growing city at the geographical bottom of California, stepped into the modern age. The vision and determination of San Diego’s civic leaders launched the successful Panama-California Exposition on Jan. 1, 1915, even though in competition with the larger, federally-funded expo in San ...

Paul Douglas (Pete) Jernigan, one of the San Diego area’s most accomplished athletes and coaches, passed away recently at his home in Hereford, Arizona. Jernigan, 75, played 10 seasons of professional baseball and later coached successful high school and Under 18 softball teams. He was named “Mr. Youth Sports” by the El Cajon Parks and Recreation Department ...

Theirs is not as old a rivalry or as traditional as Grossmont-Helix, but Grossmont-Valhalla will come close this week when the  undefeated East County powers roll in the dirt in a Grossmont Hills League game. The winner probably will determine who challenges Helix for the championship. Valhalla’s 6-0 record represents its best start since racing to 7-0 in 2005.  Grossmont, also ...

It had been almost 25 years since Rutgers University and Princeton played in the first American football game in 1867. A generation later the gridiron sport, more like Australia’s rugby, had made its way West. To an expanse near the San Diego Bay. Students from the Russ High School met adults from the “San Diego Football Club” on ...

One week before the 1969 football season A.J. (Art) Sisk resigned as coach at Hilltop High to pursue a career in publishing for the McGraw-Hill Company. Sisk began selling textbooks to schools in the San Diego area, launching a publishing career that led to real estate on both coasts, and other ventures. The graduate of Redlands High ...

The Western League  race begins  this week with the season’s premier matchup to date:  No. 1 St. Augustine (5-0) plays host to No. 6 Madison (4-1) at Mesa College on Friday. Two of the San Diego Section’s most successful coaches will be on opposite sidelines. Madison’s Rick Jackson has a 112-35-1 record in 13 seasons at the ...

The first athlete inducted into the Sweetwater High Hall of Fame, Roger Lively was a standout in the major sports and a steady, vital presence in a remarkable run by the Red Devils in the 1956-57 basketball season. The 6-foot, 3-inch Lively, who passed at age 77 earlier this month, played center for coach Wells Gorman’s ...

Mission Hills is at Mater Dei in this week’s top game as many clubs are idle, prepping for the beginning of league races next week. Cathedral, 49-7 winner over a Bakersfield Liberty team that won the Central Section Division I title a year ago, is eighth in the latest Cal-Hi Sports rankings. St. Augustine, which meets the ...

Editor’s Note:  A couple sharp-eyed readers, Gregg Durrant and Justin Schaeffer, noticed a couple whiffs as soon as this article appeared.  I listed Tony Jefferson as a wide receiver when he is a safety and  overlooked kicker Jason Myers of Jacksonville. I should have caught the error that cited Myers as a Mater Dei/Santa Ana graduate ...

St. Augustine and Cathedral  are on a collision course and, unless Madison gums up their plans, will meet for the Western League championship at Mesa College in  Week 9, the winner being the favorite for the top seed in the San Diego Section Open Division playoffs. Cathedral showed resolve last week, overcoming Helix leads of 21-0 and ...

Not the most significant achievement in school history, but St. Augustine celebrated. The Saints won at Los Angeles Loyola, 17-14, last week, defeating the Cubs for the first time since Prohibition. Okay, so it was only the eighth time the teams had faced each other in the 88 years and 89 seasons since 1928. But the victory was the San Diego squad’s first ...

At 3:38 p.m. on Thursday, September 8, 2011, all of San Diego County and communities north to San Clemente, south to northern Mexico, and east into Arizona suddenly were without power. Something had gone awry at a connecting station in the western Arizona desert. A total of 1.4 million customers across the region were without electricity. Flights were ...

There was not a track and field event in which Dick Coxe did not have expertise, but he probably preferred the grueling discipline of cross country. Friends and former athletes will honor Coxe with their recollections of the demanding, straight-shooting and compassionate mentor in a celebration of his life on Sept. 18 from 1-4 p.m. in ...

El Camino was 58-81 through 2015 after Herb Meyer took his 339 career victories and walked into the coaching sunset in 2001. Jerry Ralph is the Oceanside school’s fourth coach since Meyer stepped down and may have the Warriors positioned to end a run of mediocrity. El Camino has had 4 winning seasons following Meyer, whose brilliant ...

 Grossmont School District superintendent Lewis Smith was one of the most ardent advocates of what could have been termed the “Free San Diego” movement in the late 1950s. Smith and other educational and school board associates wanted out of the vast Southern Section and were instrumental in formation of the tiny, 28-school San Diego Section in ...