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A couple hard-knocking hurdlers from Cathedral and a shot putter from Madison furnished the star power for the San Diego Section in the boys’ 96th and girls’ 41st State high school track and field championships over the weekend in Clovis. Doton Ogundeji of Madison, overcoming a fouled-filled, nonqualifying 163-foot effort in Friday’s discus trials, won the shot ...

The San  Diego Section has 16 state top 10 performances, compared with 18 two weeks ago and 11 last week as the 96th meet championships loom this weekend at Clovis’ Buchanan High. There are many scoring opportunities for the local group after a strong finish to the San Diego Section season Saturday at Mt. Carmel, but the ...

Were the San Diego Section trials yesterday the “proof of the pudding” for area qualifiers who now enter the two most important weeks of the season? Section finals will be Saturday at Mt. Carmel High, followed  by the state meet in Clovis June 6-7. While the ancient proverb may not apply, San Diego athletes did  not come close to season ...

It’s that time of year. Fire-delayed league finals didn’t slow San Diego Section track and field athletes in their pursuit of May-June honors. Seven new state top 10 performances were recorded (see table below). Poway’s Brandon Lucas turned a wind-assisted :10.64 100 meters and hustled to a :21.18 200 (County No. 13 all-time) in the Palomar League finals. ...

Tim Danielson was convicted last week in El Cajon Superior Court of murdering his ex-wife in 2011.  His expected sentence of 50 years to life is pending. I’d like to remember Danielson as the billiant runner who competed  for coach Harry Taylor at Chula Vista High and set San Diego Section standards in 1965-66 that still are unequaled, 48 years ...

Poway’s 400-meter relay team was as hot as the 100-degree  weather at the Escondido Invitational last night. A Titans foursome of Will James, Jarod Turnage, Brandon Lucas, and Lance Mudd flawlessly passed the baton and covered the toasty, all-weather layout  in :41.62, fourth fastest time in California this year. It is rarefied air for the Titans, whose previous best was :42.02, and ...

Modified Sportsmen race cars and the arrival of the San Diego Chargers may have saved night football in the hills and valleys east of San Diego. An unusual alliance. Grossmont School District teams, faced with an illumination problem, played many games on the infield of the dirt track oval near the Gillespie Field airport from 1958-66. New schools (Mount Miguel, 1957, ...

Madison’s Doton Ogundeji continues to lead state and national shot putters and Mt. Carmel’s Derek Morton has moved in front of California 800-meter runners. Both are expected to take on some of the nation’s best in the annual Arcadia Invitational Friday and Saturday. Ogundeji leads the nation with a throw of 65-4 1/2 and is 10th in ...

Sprints and hurdles times are fully automatic.  Some better marks in parenthesis are hand timed. w–wind aided. BOYS 100— Lucas (Poway), 10.81, Dickens (Grossmont), 10.82, Doan (St. Augustine), 10.84, LeBlanc (University City) 10.88, Brewer (Brawley) 10.90, Dosier (Monte Vista) 10.90, Hennie (San Marcos) 10.94, Miller (Oceanside) 10.95. STATE–Godin (Santa Ana Mater Dei), 10.36.  200— Doan (St. Augustine),  21.76, Lucas ...

Madison’s Doton Ogundeji continues to lead state and national shot putters and Mt. Carmel’s Derek Morton has moved in front of California 800-meter runners. Both are expected to take on some of the nation’s best in the annual Arcadia Invitational Friday and Saturday. Ogundeji leads the nation with a throw of 65-4 1/2 and is 10th in ...

There wasn’t just a millennium going on. Wholesale league changes and the San Diego Section’s second annexation of schools in the Imperial Valley were creating a new landscape. What started in 1980 with the addition of Calipatria, Holtville, and Imperial, was completed after Blythe Palo Verde Valley,  El Centro Central, Brawley, Calexico, El Centro Southwest, and Calexico ...

Madison’s Doton Ogundeji, who made noise in the state meet in 2013, raised the decibel level to a shout  at the Sundevil Invitational Saturday at Mt. Carmel. The all-San Diego Section football linebacker last season took the national lead in the shot put with a 65 foot, 4 ½ inch heave, almost two feet better than ...

La Jolla Country Day’s 60-42 loss to Los Altos Hills Pinewood in the State Girls’ V championship last week was the final, tumbling domino in a disappointing San Diego Section season. Mater Dei Catholic was the only boys’ team to advance beyond the first round of the Southern California Regional and got to the Division II ...

Bill Walton and Larry Blum had more in common than just being among the crowd at the University of San Francisco’s National Invitation Tournament game recently. Both are former San Diego Section basketball players of the year, Blum at Crawford in 1962-63 and Walton at Helix in 1969-70. Blum set a San Diego Section record with 737 ...

It only took 46 years. The population growth of San Diego’s North County coincided with the rise of the once small and remote Avocado League, founded in 1953. After recent years of  ascendancy, a punctuation mark was added this season. As Tom Shanahan of The San Diego Union pointed out: –Five Avocado schools ranked in the top six of ...

Wipeouts like these usually are reserved for the North Shore of Oahu. San Diego Section boys basketball teams lost 10 of 11 games in the first round of the Southern California regional playoffs. Girls teams helped ease the pain and won 6 of 14. In four games in which San Diego boys teams had more favorable seeds their ...

What goes around, comes around. La Costa Canyon, ranked No. 1 in the first UT-San Diego basketball poll in December, is first again after vacating the top spot weeks ago. The Mavericks defeated St. Augustine, 62-60, in the San Diego Section Open Division championship last week and received 10 first-place votes.  St. Augustine dropped to second and Mater Dei, ...

Talk about a kick in the pelvic region.  The new State Basketball Tournament Open Division pairings did no favors for two San Diego Section stalwarts. The seedings and pairings were announced by the state CIF this evening. St. Augustine (28-3) will visit Santa Ana Mater Dei (31-0), the nation’s No. 2-ranked team, Friday night, March 14. Santa Ana ...

St. Augustine and La Costa Canyon, which played arguably the game of the regular season in January, go for the gold tonight. The Saints edged the Mavericks, 79-74, as part of a Martin Luther King Day doubleheader at Francis Parker and things haven’t changed.  Expect the score to be a little lower but the intensity a ...

Kearny High found the key to ending Sweetwater’s great run Saturday afternoon. Coach Carl Bronson, ably assisted by UT-San Diego sportswriter Mark Zeigler, exposed the shorter Red Devils’ lack of a low post defense. The strategy allowed the Komets to repeatedly attack from the low block under the basket for layups and point-blank shots. Kearny took the lead ...