All Posts – with Preview

By the grace of a 17-14 advantage in first downs, San Diego High survived a 20-20 standoff with Anaheim in the CIF playoff semifinals before 10,271 persons at Long Beach Veterans’ Memorial Stadium. A heart-thumping conclusion represented the final shot in a frenetic battle of undefeated teams that brought an end to a week of intrigue ...

Since winning it all in 1922, San Diego High had made unsuccessful playoff attempts in 1925, ’33, ’45, ’46, ’47, ’48, ’50, ’53, and ’54, and they were positioned again to make another run at a Southern Section championship. Coach Duane Maley whistled the start of September  drills with all hands on deck, except one. Starting quarterback ...

Coach Brad Leaf’s Foothills Christian squad picked up where it left off, first in the first San Diego Union-Tribune basketball poll,  which the Knights dominated in 2015-16. The El Cajon club is 6-1, with only a 90-73 loss to defending national champion Chino Hills after leading the Huskies, 42-38, at halftime. What’s up with Cathedral?  Picked as high ...

Rick Jackson, who guided the Madison Warhawks to a 12-2 record, two classic postseason victories, plus a third almost as riveting, has the leading won-loss record among San Diego County coaches with at least 100 career victories. Jackson is 120-36-4 in 12 seasons at Madison for a .768 percentage, including state championships in 2012 and 2016. Madison ...

A twist in the CIF Southern Section playoffs this year resulted in the Coronado principal twisting in the wind. Escondido and Coronado had tied for second place in the Avocado League. making either school eligible for the league’s runner-up berth in the Southern Division (small schools) postseason. So far, so good. But Escondido coach Walt West was confused. The Cougars ...

Chet DeVore was taken aback, if not incredulous. “I’m a basketball coach,” he told his boss. “I don’t have enough experience to coach football.” That was DeVore’s reaction in 1951 when Chula Vista High principal Joe Rindone, asked DeVore to head the Spartans’ football program. Few administrators have been so prescient. Forty-four wins, seven losses, and one tie later, ...

La Jolla Country Day will set a San Diego Section record tomorrow evening when it plays visiting Oakland McClymonds in the State Division V-A finals at 6 p.m. The championship will mark the 16th game, the length of a regular NFL season, for the Torreys since the since the start of the season. Madison and Santa Fe ...

An apparent CIF playoff loss by another San Diego-area team loomed when Sweetwater took possession after an Anaheim punt late in the third quarter, trailing in a first-round game, 7-0. What followed was legend. What Red Devils quarterback Wayne Sevier remembered, before he passed away in 1999, was “twenty-four plays, eighty-three yards, seven first downs, six measurements, ...

Cathedral, Madison, Mater Dei, and The Bishop’s comprise four of the final Top 10 selections in the weekly Union-Tribune poll and will begin quests for state championships this week. Cathedral was a unanimous choice as No. 1, earning first-place votes from all 27 panelists. La Jolla Country Day, which finished out of the Top 10 but received points ...

San Diego High fell with a resounding thud in quarterfinals of the Southern Section playoffs. A 26-18 loss to old nemesis Long Beach Poly in Balboa Stadium was surprising in its decisiveness, devastating in its finality. Especially for coach Duane Maley, who announced his intention to retire from coaching and go into administration at the end of ...

The CIF power ratings are holding up fairly well as the final round of San Diego Section play takes place Friday and Saturday at Southwestern College. The two highest power rated clubs will meet in the Open Division and in D-1 and D-3. Winning teams will progress to a variety of divisions in a Southern California round ...

First athletes and then coaches, each experience leaving a lifetime of memories. BOBBY KENNEDY The San Diego State graduate was  head baseball coach at Chula Vista from 1957-82, his teams winning six Metropolitan League titles, earning 19 playoff appearances, and compiling an overall record of 329-266. Kennedy also was a championship softball player, almost to the end, participating ...

Power ratings honcho John LaBeta can look at the semifinals pairings in this week’s San Diego Section playoffs and feel pretty good, if not vindicated, about the controversial seedings process. History has not recorded a season in which all teams and coaches involved were happy with the results, be they computer generated or by the human eye ...

A sneeze at a military facility near Junction City, Kansas, turned into a cold that led to a fever that led to a death that led to a global pandemic. The so-called “Spanish Flu”, which is said to have first struck World War I soldiers processing in and out of Camp Funston on the Fort Riley ...

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 ...