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San Diego Section teams posted a 4-2 record in the Southern California playoffs (a.k.a. State  Bowl Championship Series) last week, the games hewing to a historic trend of strength in the lower divisions. Local teams will be favored in at least three of the state championship games this week, with all kickoffs Saturday night at 6. DIVISION ...

Like ships passing in the night, Birt Slater and Herb Meyer were headed in the opposite direction, but their coaching paths were virtually identical. Slater confirmed his retirement as head coach at Kearny following the Komets’ 39-28 loss in the San Diego Section championship game to Meyer’s first year, front-loaded El Camino squad at San Diego Stadium. Each ...

After losing their first game, 23-19, to Scottsdale Chaparral, the Helix Highlanders fell from their first-place position in the Union-Tribune‘s  opening football poll but unanimously regained the top spot in the final week of the poll following their 44-30 win against St. Augustine in the San Diego Section Open Division championship game. The Saints  finished second and Mission Hills, the ...

Foothills Christian, No. 1 in the first Union-Tribune basketball poll, was 4-0 before being savaged by a piranha-like attack from the Chino Hills Huskies in finals of the Battle Zone Tournament at Corona Centennial Saturday night. Final score, 106-86. Foothills’ T.J. Leaf scored 44 points and was 21 for 27 from the field, but the Knights were swamped at ...

Helix defeated St. Augustine, 44-30,  in a terrific Open Division championship game before a standing-room  crowd of at least 10,000 persons at Southwestern College and six San Diego teams qualified for Southern California championship play. It’s a brave new world in the state CIF. Teams will compete in 13 divisions Dec. 11-12  and 50 teams will be playing ...

Joe Schloss, who  operated a North Park sporting goods business for 69 years and coached the same Little League team for 59 seasons, passed away  at age 88. Schloss, a 1944 graduate of San Diego High, coached a legion of youngsters for the North Park Little League and both of his sons spent many years in sports. “Joe instilled ...

St. Augustine’s rout of Mission Hills in the San Diego Section semifinals created a seismic response in the state top 25 rankings as selected by Cal-Hi Sports. The Saints jumped from On-The-Bubble status to 21st in this week’s poll and Helix, their Open Division championship-game opponent Saturday at 7 p.m.  at Southwestern College, vaulted from No. 11 to ...

Thanks to the numerous opportunities for playoff participation, Coronado, a third-place finisher in the Central League,  is celebrating its third San Diego Section championship today. The Islanders topped Crawford of the Manzanita League, 21-7, at Southwestern College last night for the Division V title, their first since coach Dave Tupec’s team won back-to-back championships as members of ...

You could hear the gasps of shock from the North County denizens who worship at the shrine of the Mission Hills Grizzlies. St. Augustine ran away from coach Tim Hauser’s team, 48-14,  as Elijah Preston rushed for 236 yards and three touchdowns before a crowd of about 6,000 at Mesa College in the San Diego Section ...

Idleness breeds contempt or a drop in the ratings. Mission Hills has fallen from ninth to 11th in Cal-Hi Sports’ state top 25, partly because the Grizzlies drew a bye in the first round of the San Diego Section playoffs last week. Also byed last week, Helix remained 12th.  Cathedral  and St. Augustine  are on the bubble after they, ...

 Hoover principal Floyd Johnson was going to hold the line. His school was the technical host for the annual game with San Diego High in Balboa Stadium and after the throngs of recent years Johnson vowed to close sales “when the 27,000th ticket is sold.” Johnson said that he did not want to revisit the “turmoil” attendant ...

Although about two-touchdown underdogs, coach Bill Bailey’s San Diego Hilltoppers took a 12-0 lead into the fourth quarter of the Southern California championship game. It would not be enough.  The Hillers sustained a third consecutive loss in the finals, following defeats of the 1925 and 1933 clubs. Favored Santa Monica rallied for a 13-12 victory before 26,601 ...

Undefeated Mission Hills was an almost wire-to-wire, regular-season winner in the Union-Tribune writers’ poll, but the Grizzlies are seeded only third behind Helix and St. Augustine in the Open Division of the San Diego Section playoffs, which begin this week.   Power ratings, introduced three years ago,  base a team’s strength on a number of factors,  most visible ...

The regular season is finished, playoffs are about to begin, and who claimed league championships? AVOCADO EAST                                                                               ...

Helix picked up 4 additional first place votes in this week’s Union-Tribune poll and now has eight, half the total of front running mission Hills, which remained No. 1 for the ninth consecutive week and moved into top 10 in the weekly Cal-Hi Sports‘ state rankings.   The Highlanders, ranked 13th by Cal-Hi Sports, have trailed Mission Hills since a ...

City schools experimented with a schedule of Saturday games for one week. At the same time it was revealed that the board of education had supplemented schools’ associated student body accounts with $49,000 since the ban on night games began in 1974. The school board said it hoped to determine whether parents and students would prefer games ...

An outstanding run by Sweetwater, starting in the 1960s, actually was just beginning. The Red Devils went 12-1, won a championship for the first time since 1972 and launched a 36-game winning streak. They would claim another title in 1985 and posted an ’80-’87 record of  80 wins and 11 losses, 73-9-2 under coach Gene Alim. Starting in 1968, David ...

Business has picked up at Kearny, where the Komets have won three in a row and can finish the regular season with their best record since 2011. Takoda Browne, who has scored touchdowns by running, receiving,  kickoff, punt, and pass interception returns, and two-point conversion attempts,  leads the San Diego Section with 23 touchdowns and 142 points ...

Action above, including Long Beach Poly’s 52-6 loss to Concord De La Salle, has resulted in Mission Hills and Helix getting another boost in Cal-Hi Sports newsletter’s unofficial, weekly state rankings by division. Mission Hills is 10th and Helix 11th in Division I, partly because Poly dropped from eighth to 13th.  The Grizzlies and Highlanders were 12th and ...

Losing had become an unshakable habit for Coronado. It had come to this for the Islanders:  Point Loma essentially begged them to play a scheduled game. Outscored, 104-0, in the season’s first four games, down to maybe 17 able-bodied players, and facing a strong city school, Coronado was thinking long and hard about exposing its athletes to another gridiron ...