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Two things learned in Week 1: Helix might be less and St. Augustine might be more. The No. 1 Highlanders, ranked ninth in the state in Cal-Hi Sports’ preseason Top 25, was surprised, 28-21, by Timpview of Provo, Utah, in a home game that marked the debut of coach Robbie Owens. Timpview is no chump, with a flock of state ...

Helix and St. Augustine are 1-2 in the first Union-Tribune football poll and that’s how they finished in 2015. The Highlanders  and most of the rest of the San Diego Section open the season this week,  marking one the earliest starts in County history, probably preceded only by the Hawaii preseason trips that were popular a couple decades ...

“City” Stadium, a horseshoe-shaped edifice with a declared  23,312 concrete seats, opened the previous spring in the back yard of San Diego High. Coincidentally, football fortunes improved on the Hilltop. Coach Clarence (Nibs) Price, 2-3-1 in his inaugural 1914 season, guided the school to its best record in the 23 years since the game was introduced here. Price, ...

Uneasy rested the crown. San Diego High, anointed the best high school team in the country by a New York publication after the 12-0 campaign of 1916, experienced a season of highs and lows, emphasis on the latter. Coach Clarence (Nibs) Price, who started practice in September with news that his best player was “dangerously ill with ...

At least 19 schools in the San Diego Section changed football coaches this season and probably that many reasons could be offered for this arguably massive turnover. In no particular order, a few possible explanations:: — Pressure to win — Long hours and low stipend pay — Player eligibility — Transfer headaches — Meddling administrators — Meddling parents — Medical liability There are other factors, ...

We’ve been idle since the state high school track meet and probably won’t be posting much for the next month, as our two grandsons, 13 and 12, from Connecticut have made their annual invasion. For Susie and me, this represents  4-5 weeks of never-ending activity, a veritable jailbreak every day.  It seems like we are training with the SEALs. We wouldn’t have ...

San Diego High continued to transition to mediocrity from the championship squad of three seasons before and tiny Coronado mixed with the big boys. Bryan (Pesky) Sprott and five members of the Hilltoppers’ nationally-acclaimed 1916 team now were leading the University of California’s powerful squad and coach Clarence (Nibs) Price was on the Bears’ football coaching ...

San Diego Section track-and-field entries placed in eight of 32 events at the 98th state track championships in Clovis Saturday. —About 26 per cent of the entries, out of 96 total at the beginning of Friday’s trials, scored points amid the 102-degree heat of Buchanan High. And with no individual champion for the first time in ...

Do well in the section finals.  Get to the state meet.  Qualify in the Friday trials.  Rest up for the finals.  Finish in the top 5 Saturday.  Get a “PR”*. Score a point or more and earn a medal.  Maybe finish first. That’s the season goal. Ninety-six San Diego Section entrants, less a few because of those in more ...

Roscoe Cook, Bobby Staten, Willie Jordan, and Charles (Sugar Jet) Davis comprised a swift foursome of San Diego High athletes who surprised the field and brought home a Southern California track championship. The biggest surprise was by Cook, who entered the season as the most important and accomplished of the quartet. Some background: Cook was the 1956 CIF ...

Competition and controversy were different words with different meanings, but they blurred in the far-flung Coast League, whose fratricidal members regularly accused their brethren of academic or residential mischief. San Diego High was on the receiving end of a far-out allegation that threatened to stop one of the best teams in school history. Senior Captain Russ Saunders, the 5-foot, ...

It’s been a slow year in San Diego Section track and field, although business  picked up a little in the last couple invitationals, Arcadia and Mt. St. Antonio. Two more weeks of dual meets, plus the annual Escondido Invitational, will take girls and boys competitors into league trials, the first step toward the state meet at ...

“Power, deception, speed, coordination, all wrapped in 11 (blue and) white packages from the Border City.” Such was the observation of a Los Angeles Times reporter who witnessed San Diego High’s 27-0 victory over host Santa Barbara along with 5,000 others at Peabody Stadium in the Southern California playoff semifinals. “Either Santa Barbara had a bad case ...

San Diego High represented one of the best football coaching jobs in the state, but was John Perry all in? Perry ruminated that the 1925 season, which ended in a bitter, 13-6 loss to Covina in the CIF championship game, was too long, ending Dec. 12, and a reason his club had let down in the ...

John Perry was 29-10-2 with a winning percentage of .738 in four seasons as San Diego High coach. But that wasn’t good enough for one sportswriter on San Diego’s largest daily newspaper. A crushing midseason, 26-0 loss to Long Beach Poly was followed by a “disinterested”, 13-0 victory over Coast League doormat Whittier. “The wreck of the Hesperus ...

There were no state championships, but it was a solid season in San Diego Section  basketball. Foothills Christian, behind McDonald’s all-star T.J. Leaf, was third in the state in Cal-Hi Sports‘ final boys Top 40 rankings. Cathedral ranked 14th and St. Augustine 23rd. The 2015-16 finish showed marked improvement  over the 2014-15 Cal-Hi rankings, in which St. Augustine was 23rd, Torrey Pines 24th, ...

Army-Navy had a 5-0 record.  San Diego High (4-1) had just been run off the field,  51-0 by the 5-0 Long Beach Poly Jackrabbits. Did Army-Navy have a chance the following week against the Hilltoppers and their 24-year-old, rookie head coach, John Perry. No. Perry addressed a school assembly the day before his team would meet coach Paul ...

Bill Walton was 33-0 in his senior season at Helix.  T.J. Leaf was 25-5 at Foothills Christian. Walton’s Helix team dominated the San Diego Section, but the Highlanders’ 70-56 victory over Chula Vista in the AA finals in 1970 marked the end of season. Southern California playoffs were reserved only for Southern Section squads. Leaf’s Foothills Christian team, benefiting ...

It was five and out for the San Diego Section in the Southern California regional semifinals last night. Most of the road-weary locals were in their ball games at halftime but faded thereafter, memories of terrific seasons and bus rides of up to 150 miles ahead as they made their way home. Foothills Christian (25-5) trailed, 37-30, after 16 ...

The few, the proud…. Five teams from the San Diego Section still are around  as the Southern California regional playoffs reach the semifinals round tomorrow. —Foothills Christian (25-4) will try to stop the No. 1 team in the country when it challenges Chino Hills (31-0) at Colony High in Ontario, a “neutral” site 11 miles and 20 ...