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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 ...

Greater challenges lie ahead, but San Diego Section teams in the Southern California regional playoffs were successful in three of four Open Division quarterfinals games last night. —The Foothills Christian Knights stunned Santa Ana Mater Dei, dealing the Monarchs their first loss at home in 10 years, 50-46, and moving on to Tuesday’s semifinals and a ...

Despite being seeded in the nether regions of the Southern California regional playoffs, No. 15 Kearny and No. 12 St. Augustine scored significant road victories last night, while most other San Diego Section squads, including all 13 girls’ teams in action, were stowing their gear today. Kearny (31-3) overcame a 53-47, fourth-quarter deficit to upset No. 2-ranked and host Huntington Beach ...

Army-Navy Academy in Pacific Beach couldn’t rely on a six-game County League schedule to complement a full slate of games. As reported in The San Diego Union,”…through an error at the beginning of the County League the eleven was omitted.” If that report is to be believed, the person who drew up the County League schedule “forgot” ...

Records through Monday, March 7: Rank Team Record Points Last Poll 1 Foothills Christian (11) 24-4 110 1 2 Cathedral 20-6 96 2 3 St. Augustine 22-7 79 4 4 Kearny 30-3* 77 7 5 Torrey Pines 25-5** 71 3 6 El Camino 27-6 50 5 7 Army-Navy 21-10 42 6 8 La Jolla Country Day 28-5 33 NR 9 Mission Bay 21-8 25 8 10 Poway 24-8 13 9 **Forfeited 73-64 victory over Manhattan Beach Mira Costa Dec. 26.                                    *Forfeited 57-37 victory Dec. 5 over Horizon.                 ...

San Diego’s eternal quest for respect from the Southern Section renews this week with opening rounds of the state regional playoffs. Respect still is to be earned. Only one of 15 boys teams is seeded higher than its opponent in the six divisions, Open and I-V, brackets for which were announced yesterday by the state CIF office ...

Jerry Ralph made history earlier this week when he was announced as the head football coach at El Camino High in Oceanside, becoming the first to lead five different San Diego Section programs. Ralph has compiled a 123-76-2  (.614) record in 18 seasons, beginning in 1997 at Santana, followed by stints at St. Augustine, Del Norte, ...