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Win or lose Saturday evening, coach Chris Hauser’s Mission Hills Grizzlies are an almost unanimous choice as the No. 1 football team in the San Diego Section. The final Top 10 poll of the season was voted on after conclusion of the  five San Diego Section championships. The Grizzlies will host the Central Section champion Bakersfield Drillers ...

The discussion already is in full swing.  Who’s No. 1? The U-T San Diego preseason basketball poll has La Costa Canyon No. 1 and St. Augustine No. 2. North County bias by a majority of the voters aside,  I’ll take the Saints.  Call me South-of-Highway-56-biased, at least for this vote. Saints Coach Mike Haupt, 330-173 in 18 seasons, guides the state’s ...

San Diego High first played Bakersfield, then known  as Kern County Union High, in 1917. The Drillers, who play at Mission Hills Saturday night in a State Southern Regional playoff, last met an area team in  1952. San Diego holds a 6-5, all-time advantage over the Drillers, the Cavemen having won the last five meetings.  Hoover and ...

One San Diego team is in the State Bowl Southern Regional playoffs and another will learn its fate Monday. Mission Hills (12-1) was invited to play host to the Central Section champion Bakersfield Drillers (11-2) Saturday night, Dec. 14, in Division I. Christian, which defeated San Marcos, 19-7, for the San Diego Section III title, filed suit ...

This team may have been the best of all coached by Duane Maley at San Diego High, but the Cavemen lost two of their best players and five reserves as practice started and their best player at the most important time of the season. They came up short in the Southern California playoffs. Starting halfback Darnes Johnson and ...

Is a state bowl game series game  in the offing for a San Diego Section team? Cal-Hi Sports is suggesting that Mission Hills could meet the winner of  tonight’s Southern Section, Vista Murrieta-Corona Centennial Division I championship contest.  Such a game would take place on  the weekend of Dec. 13-14 and be a Southern California playoff ...

So shocked were San Pasqual defenders they just watched. Cathedral’s Jack Onstott ran 98 yards with an intercepted pass and brought a stunning conclusion to the Division I, San Diego Section championship game. It was the most thrilling finish since…since Auburn beat Alabama with a 99-yard field goal return a week ago. But Cathedral’s three-overtime, 37-31 victory over ...

Imperial’s dream run and Crawford’s miracle run each came to an end…with a thud.                                                                                                                                                    The Tigers of the Imperial Valley were no match for St. Augustine in the San Diego Section Division II semifinals, losing 56-12, despite a good performance by Royce Freeman. Crawford, which had stepped down a division and rekindled success of years past, was ...

Warren Vinton, who helped Helix establish itself as an athletic force as San Diego schools moved to form their own CIF section, passed away in Murrieta in Riverside County recently at age 89. Vinton  posted a 25-9-1 record as the Highlanders’ head coach from 1964-67, winning two Grossmont League championships and taking his team to the ...

Ailing John Carroll, still not fully back from a late-season health scare,  wasn’t about to go hyperbolic. After all, Carroll has won 233 games  in  25 seasons at Oceanside. U-T San Diego writer Don Norcross wanted to know if the Pirates’ rally from 23 points behind at the half to a 33-30 Open Division playoff victory over ...

Props to the Open Division, which delivered the games the CIF hoped for in a terrific week of San Diego Section playoffs. But Oceanside’s stunning comeback, which ousted Eastlake, 33-30, and Mission Hills’ grinding, 24-21 win over Helix were just part of  competitive, late November action. And at most venues there was the accompaniment of a calendar ...

The seeding panel of mostly former coaches did its job. There were almost no upsets in any of the six rounds on the opening Friday of the San Diego Section playoffs. None, except in the ubiquitous and maligned Division IV, where 11 seed El Centro Southwest (3-7) defeated six seed Montgomery (4-6), 10-7, and 10 seed Clairemont ...

Cal-Hi Sports honcho Mark Tennis continues to build a case for Eastlake as the San Diego Section’s No. 1 team, although the 31 members of the U-T San Diego voting panel have re-installed Oceanside as No. 1, followed by Mission Hills. Eastlake is third. Answers should be forthcoming in the Open Division playoffs, which begin tonight.  Eastlake ...

Oceanside and Mission Hills reached the end of the 10-game regular-season race in a flatfooted tie, each earning a first-place rating after they deadlocked with 276 points in the UT-San Diego poll of sportswriters and sportscasters. Coach Chris Hauser’s Grizzlies, who shocked Oceanside, 30-6, in the regular season, are the top-seeded team in the San Diego ...

We must be in an era of entitlement. How else can you explain that 64 of 97 San Diego Section teams were invited to participate in the playoffs? And 25 don’t even have winning records. Seventeen losing teams and eight with .500 records are in. They’ll vie for 6 divisional championships. Sixty of 96 teams, including seven with losing records, ...

San Diego High’s football program has bottomed out. The Cavers forfeited to Hoover on the Monday before the Friday game this week.  The reason given was that they had less than 20 players and unable to field a full squad. There was a time when that many running backs turned out for football at San Diego High. San ...

A small item in The San Diego Union revealed that the Coliseum Arena in San Diego would be dark on Sept. 24. A scheduled boxing card  was called off, because the promoter didn’t want to compete for attendance and gate receipts with the annual City Schools’ football carnival. The carnival, kickoff to the high school season, was ...

Oceanside is back on top in the U-T San Diego football poll, despite losing 30-6 to Mission Hills, the No. 2 team, a few weeks back. I voted for Oceanside.  My thoughts were as conflicted as the total points separating Nos. 1 and 2. Oceanside compiled 276 points and 12 first-place votes following its 43-0 blowout of ...

Football is fun again at Sweetwater and Hoover is traveling in style. Sweetwater whipped Castle Park, 28-7, for its fourth victory in a row and a 5-4 record.  The Red Devils had not won 4 straight since 1996 and have not been 5-4 since 1998. Hoover is a 7-game winner for only the 12th season in the ...

Oceanside became the second San Diego County team (and the first San Diego Section squad) to participate in the state playoffs, which resumed in 2006 after an 80-year hiatus. The Pirates (11-1) of coach John Carroll, who won Carroll’s fourth Section championship and Oceanside’s 10th overall, were chosen to represent the South in the Division II ...