All Posts – with Preview

Kearny High and Point Loma kicked off at 7 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 26, 1979, and the Komets clinched a 9-6 victory on Oct. 27, 1979, about 18 hours later. Five seconds remained on the clock when the Komets’ Jim Goosens attempted the first field goal of his life and booted a 25-yard placement that sent everyone ...

A stunning, 20-12 victory over archrival San Diego High brought back a flood of memories to Hoover coach Roy Engle. —That hazy afternoon in Balboa Stadium in 1935 when Engle drove the Cardinals to a fourth-quarter, 7-6 victory over San Diego. —Engle, the senior ball carrier, gaining the final 25 yards in three carries in the 80-yard ...

Ron Dargo, 69, who pitched Crawford High to the 1962 San Diego Section baseball championship, passed away recently at his home in Spring Valley. Dargo, a lefthander, and  John Allison, who pitched from the right side, led a late-season Colts playoff push after they finished second to San Diego in the Eastern League race. The Colts, who ...

Lincoln and Mission Bay took their first, tentative steps. St. Augustine continued to push for league affiliation. North County schools wanted to be closer to home. Army-Navy and Brown Military didn’t want to be left out. Such was the landscape, which promised to  change.   Joe Rindone, principal of Chula Vista High and president of the CIF Southern Section executive ...

The sluggish UT-San Diego poll showed no change in the first six positions from last week with  minor juggling after that, most notable being St. Augustine’s rising from 10th to seventh. Meanwhile, there continues to be an absence of San Diego Section teams in the Cal-Hi Sports state top 20. Torrey Pines, Foothills Christian, La Costa Canyon, and ...

Billy Casper, who passed away recently at age 83, was not only a Hall of Fame golfer as a professional but  also made his mark as a student  at Chula Vista High. Casper was runner-up as a sophomore, champion as a junior, and runner-up as a senior in the CIF Southern Section golf championships from 1948-50. Casper ...

Several Eastern League schools found themselves unable to access a favored playing site, by the San Diego Conquistadors. Yes, those Q’s, the American Basketball Association professional team located here. The preps, in keeping with years of tradition, thought Aztec Bowl was reserved for them for games Oct. 13, 20, and 27. Trouble was those were the same nights ...

The world is Torrey Pines’ oyster, for now. Coach John Olive’s Falcons completed an 8-0 January and have a 10-game winning streak as they visit Rancho Bernardo tonight. The 21-2 Falcons have six remaining regular-season games against teams with a combined record of 61-65. None of those  opponents, Rancho Bernardo, twice (11-9), Mt. Carmel (12-10), Poway (13-9), Westview (8-14), ...

Where have I gone wrong? I voted for Morse as No. 5 in the UT-San Diego basketball poll this week. I assigned No. 10 to Army-Navy. The poll of 11 voters released today shows Army-Navy No. 5 and Morse No. 9.  No change from last week for either team. Morse defeated Riverside John North, 96-88, in double overtime and ...

Helix’  San Diego Section Division II title represented what may have been the finest coaching performance in Jim Arnaiz’s 27-season career. The Highlanders had won only 4 of their first 9 games but three ties had made them 4-2-3  when they began a five-week run to the championship. –They improved to 5-2-3 and clinched second place in ...

We’re going to hold off on publishing the weekly Union-Tribune basketball poll, because games Monday night would dramatically alter the Top 10, the deadline of which for voters is 10 a.m. on Monday. The poll’s timeliness often is in question at this time of year, because clubs are involved in the annual series of one-night stands and specially promoted events on ...

The order of  the Union-Tribune Top 10 was unchanged after the fourth vote of the season, but there will be changes next week. No. 1 Foothills Christian was beaten, 48-42, by The Bishop’s at Cuyamaca College last night in what is evolving into a tough Coastal Division race. Foothills’ 6-foot, 11-inch T.J. Leaf did not play as ...

John Kovac, the first head  football coach at Mesa College and coach of Coronado’s 1955-56 Southern California basketball championship team, passed away at age 89. Services for Kovac, who moved from San Diego to Palm Springs in October, will be Jan. 20 at St. Brigit’s Parish, Pacific Beach, on Jan. 20 at 11 a.m. Kovac opened the Mesa program in 1964 ...

An error in compilation of our list of coaches with at least 100 career victories omitted a 40th member of that club. Monte Vista’s Ed Carberry posted a 100-59-3 record in 14 seasons, with a .626 winning percentage. Carberry became the Monarchs’ coach in 1989 and was 72-51-2 through 1999.  Page Culver coached the Spring Valley team in 2000. Carberry returned ...

Rory Trup, the San Diego Section 880-yard run champion in 1970 at Mission Bay, passed away. Trup, 62, of Encinitas ran 1:55.3 to win the Section title at Balboa Stadium and was timed in 1:55.1 in the State trials at Edwards Stadium on the University of California campus in Berkeley. Trup finished third in the 1971 San Diego ...

Foothills Christian is No. 1 in the UT-San Diego poll, but the Knights  got there wondering what if. Foothills is 8-6 and has a “woulda-coulda” lament. The Knights forfeited two early, blowout victories because of the ubiquitous and Dreaded Administrative Glitch involving player eligibility and they’ve dropped two of their last three following the loss of their star. Coach Troy Leaf’s ...

Jason Bott of the Union-Tribune said it best: “Sometimes the best man for the job is a woman.” Her name is Andy Wharton and she hammered a 29-yard field goal with nine seconds left in the game to give West Hills a 31-28 victory over Serra. “I thought the play was stopped,” said Wharton, “but when I ...

Like mile markers on the interstate, coaching victories progress at their own pace and gradually add up. Monte Vista’s Ron Hamamoto became the eighth  to win 200 games this season and Madison’s Rick Jackson was the 39th to reach 100. Hamamoto (201-127-4), a 30-year veteran of San Diego high school wars, was at University (Cathedral), Rancho Bernardo, and Lincoln before moving to ...

Foothills Christian is second in UT-San Diego‘s basketball poll, but the Knights are 18th in the Cal-Hi Sports state vote, ahead of San Diego Section rankings leader La Costa Canyon. La Costa received all 11 first-place votes in the local balloting, but the Mavericks  received on-the-bubble status and are out of the top 20 in the state-wide publication’s weekly ratings. The ...

Oh, my! This had to be the worst weekend of football in San Diego County prep history. Two state championship games, one a devastating blowout, the other an almost certain victory flushed in the final two minutes. If John Carroll was thinking of retiring, and we have no idea what he’s thinking, would the great Oceanside coach  want to go out with such a ...