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You win your last four games by combined points of 168-21  and lose votes? That’s what happened to Oceanside (7-0) in this week’s  UT-San Diego poll.  The Pirates, who defeated Torrey Pines, 42-21,  remained on top,  but it wasn’t unanimous. No. 3 Helix (6-1) claimed two first-place votes. Cathedral, ranked second with a 7-1 record and a victory over Helix, must ...

U.S. citizens have elected 11 Presidents since 1946, but Point Loma hasn’t gotten with the program. The Pointers have had three head coaches in the 69 seasons since World War II. Count ‘em. Don Giddings replaced Bill Maxwell in 1946 and guided fortunes on Chatsworth Blvd., through 1954, succeeded by Bennie Edens, who didn’t hang up his whistle ...

Can anyone topple No. 1 Oceanside? We’ll just stick with the regular season for now. The Pirates’ last 4 opponents have a combined 16-8 won-loss record. On paper, no  other team in the UT-San Diego weekly top 10 (see below) has a  more difficult month ahead except No. 9 El Camino and No. 4 El Capitan, whose final 4 opponents ...

“We couldn’t convince ourselves that this team was as good as the Sweetwater and Oceanside teams we defeated.” Such was the lament of Chula Vista coach Chet DeVore, whose Spartans’ season ended with a 19-0 loss to Laguna Beach in a CIF lower division, Southern Group semifinal playoff. The small crowd of about 2,500 at Coronado’s Cutler ...

The opponents and the milestones continue to pass for John Carroll and his Oceanside Pirates. The 42-16 victory over Mission Hills left the Pirates with a 6-0 record and within shouting distance of an unbeaten, 10-0 regular season. Herb Meyer doesn’t hear shouts or footsteps, but Carroll’s 240th career victory moved the Oceanside coach past Point Loma’s Bennie ...

The dreaded coin toss was back. The flip of a silver dollar had elevated La Jolla into the Southern California playoffs after a first-place tie with San Diego in 1951. Now, with a week remaining in the regular season and La Jolla and San Diego again headed for a tie for the City Prep League title, school ...

Rest not only can cure what ails you but can help in the rankings. Oceanside and Mission Hills, idle last week as they ramped up for this week’s battle of the Highway 78 corridor, each was elevated in Cal-Hi Sports’ weekly State Top 25. Oceanside moved from eighth to seventh and was positioned at fifth in the ...

With a nod to the beginning of league play next week, seven of the top 10 teams in the weekly UT-San Diego poll this week took the night off. Through Week 6, ten teams still are undefeated, compared with seven a year ago. The 2014 unbeatens: Team Record Best* Year Borrego Springs 6-0 5-0 2006 El Capitan 6-0 11-0 2006 Calexico Vincent Memorial 5-0 9-0 2002 Christian 5-0 9-0 2008 Oceanside 5-0 14-0 2009 Orange Glen 6-0 12-0 1988 San Marcos 5-0 9-0 1966 Steele Canyon 5-0 3-0 2010 Sweetwater 5-0 13-0 1983 The Bishop’s 5-0 14-0 2010 *Wins in a row from ...

Coach Ron Burner has El Capitan on a fast track, but will its wheels hold up? The Vaqueros have started 5-0 twice, in 1967 under  Joe Till, and in 1973, with Joe Rockhold. They can become 5-0 this week, but a 5-0 visitor, Granite Hills, stands in the way, as do Steele Canyon (5-0), Helix (4-1), Grossmont and ...

Mission Hills at Oceanside this week brings together the top  teams in the UT-San Diego poll and coaches with a combined 358 victories in their careers. Oceanside’s John Carroll (239), generally acclaimed major domo of San Diego Section mentors, holds a 7-2-1 record against Chris Hauser (119), but the Mission Hills coach is 2-1-1 against Carroll since 2011, ...

As the first woman coach in San Diego County history and believed to be the second in California, Knengi Martin’s advice was simple. “Whatever stereotypes might be out there, break through them and follow your passion,” she said. The jovial Martin, who replaced Doug Packwood at San Diego High, spoke with Don Norcross of UT-San Diego: “My real ...

Christian can’t get no respect. Pardon the double negative, but maybe the UT-San Diego poll voters should train an eye on the Patriots of El Cajon.  Me included. The Patriots are 4-0 and the No. 1-ranked Division IV team in Southern California, according to Cal-Hi Sports. Should coach Matt Oliver’s club be ranked in the Top 10? It ...

Tomrorow’s UT-San Diego football poll undoubtedly will list Oceanside No. 1. How far will Helix fall from first after its 9-7 loss to Cathedral? I listed them fourth in my vote, behind Oceanside, Mission Hills, and Cathedral. “I told you we weren’t that good,” Helix coach Troy Starr reminded writer Don Norcross. Starr knew whereof he spoke. Slick and fast, ...

The gentle breezes of Oahu were calling San Diego Section football teams. Morse coach John Shacklett, who first brought his club to the Hawaiian Islands in 1985, led a vanguard of four local squads, there to play in the annual Shawn Akina Classic. Shawn was a University of Utah football player who passed away suddenly at age ...

Services for Jeff Staggs will be held at the Immaculate on the University of San Diego campus on Friday, Oct. 3, at 11 a.m. A celebration of life follows at the San Diego State Hall of Fame center on campus. A legion of friends remember and mourn Staggs, who passed away at age 70 at his home ...

Fifty-one years ago almost to the week, San Diego football players sweltered. It was hotter in 1963 than in 2014. Let’s try that again. It was hotter in 1963 than in 2014. Incongruous as its sounds given the recent scorchers, the weather this week was not as warm it was in that long-ago September. Back then Hoover and Helix, the presumed ...

Blown out 63-6 and 84-6 in its first two games, Calipatria appears to have given up more points in successive games than any 11-man team in the history of San Diego County and San Diego Section football. History in this case goes back to 1893, when the first reported game was San Diego High’s 8-0 win over the YMCA and ...

Helix had 16 first-place votes and Oceanside the other three as the two big shots from opposite points of the County are beginning to separate from the rest of  the Top 10 in the UT-San Diego poll. Helix gained only one point to 187 but Oceanside gained 41 to 174, while No. 3 Mission Hills dropped 35 points to 123.  St. Augustine ...

Rick Jackson’s program at Madison took off in 2008.  The Warhawks are 66-9-1 since and success is noted everywhere. The school, hard by I-805 and Clairemont Mesa Boulevard, has a modern, aluminium stadium that hosted about 4,000 persons Friday night when the opponent was St. Augustine. Multiple signage points out the Warhawks’ state division championships in 2010 ...

Dr. Tebb Kusserow, an all Southern California lineman at Santa Monica High in 1960, is involved with the Samohi Archival Project and provided this rare footage of a Southern Section playoff in 1954 between San Diego High (dark uniforms) and Santa Monica at Corsair field on the Santa Monica College campus. Led by future NFL quarterback Lee ...