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Hot weather and hot tracksters are heating up  the San Diego Section. Twelve section bests were recorded in league finals last week and the real racing (and jumping, vaulting, and throwing) begins with the Section trials, an all-day carnival at Mt. Carmel High  Saturday. STATE MEET IS GOAL Qualifiers move on to the section finals May 25 and ...

(Reported as of May 12, 2013) a–fully automatic. w–with wind.  h–hand timed.  c–converted. BOYS 100—(Fully automatic) Brown (Valhalla) 10.76, Smith (Mt. Miguel) 10.80, S. Pater (Mt. Carmel) 10.83, Molton (Hilltop) 10.84, Lucas (Poway) 10.85, Lewis (San Marcos) 10.88, McNair (Morse) 10.94, Le (Scripps Ranch) 10.94, Mayberry (Francis Parker) 10.94. Southern California & State–Muhammad (Sherman Oaks Notre Dame) 10.36aw ...

Augustine (Augie)  Escamilla, whose voice was heard at major track meets in San Diego  for more than 30 years and who was a respected educator and coach for five decades, passed away on  May 1 at age 90.  A  service will be held at Greenwood Mortuary on May 21. Virtually every outstanding San Diego High or ...

A town divided. The City Prep League, founded in 1950, and which followed a smaller, 1930-32  alignment of the same name, was history. Hoover, St. Augustine, San Diego, Lincoln and Crawford, schools located east of U.S. 395, became part of the new Eastern League. Point Loma, Mission Bay, La Jolla, Kearny, and Clairemont, schools west of 395, represented ...

San Diego had its own vision of manifest destiny.  An inferiority complex, too. Dr. Ralph Dailard, superintendent of the San Diego City Schools, announced on Sept. 22, 1959, that 15 area high schools were lined up to become members of the proposed San Diego Section of the California Interscholastic Federation. Dailard said the schools were the nine ...

This wasn’t the expected route of Duane Maley’s farewell tour. San Diego High was 0-2 for the first time in 46 years. Maley also was steaming at The San Diego Union sportswriter Jerry Magee and Maley’s boss, principal Lawrence Carr, was steaming at Maley. Blunt and outspoken, Maley didn’t realize that reporter Magee was going to write exactly ...

Birt Slater’s sanity was in question. Why would the handsome, charismatic Slater take the head coaching job at Kearny (three winning years in 15 seasons,  all-time record,  45-66-7), when he could have had the San Diego High  job when Duane Maley retired? The answer wasn’t nearly as simple, but Slater eventually created his own powerhouse at this ...

Ed Imo is going into the Kearny Hall of Fame on Saturday, April 13, in a tribute most fitting for the anchor of perhaps the finest team in school history. After a 6-6 tie with Sweetwater in the opening game, Kearny rolled to 12 consecutive victories and the San Diego Section championship. Don Norcross was the quarterback ...

One of St. Augustine’s vagabond teams finally was getting a home. A 330-yard track and field oval would provide the Saints a facility for dual-meet, track-and-field competition beginning in 1960. Football and baseball would still have to travel to  games. Basketball teams had a home since a gymnasium/auditorium was constructed in time for the 1951-52 school year. That ...

Ray Baksh, 80, who coached football at Helix, La Jolla, and St. Augustine and lived  with an entrepreneurial spirit, passed away in San Diego. Baksh was a graduate of Imperial High and is in the Imperial High football Hall of Fame.  A Marine Corps veteran and San Diego State graduate, Ray and his wife Virginia, owned ...

A West Hills athlete dominated Saturday in the Arcadia Invitational, but it wasn’t state-leading discus thrower Brenden Song. Sophomore Melissa Mongiovi, running in the afternoon seeded session, blew out a :55.28, for the overall first-place finish in the Girls’ 400-meter run.  The best the invitational runners could do in  the evening was :56.18. Song, who increased his ...

A few San Diego athletes stood out in the Friday  portion of the Arcadia Invitational. Doton Ogundeji of Madison led a group of discus throwers at 169 feet, 8 inches, third best in the County. Four Mt. Carmel runners averaged 1:57.63 in each of their 800-meter legs as part of the 4×800 seeded races.  Mt. Carmel’s time ...

“Arcadia is the big one,” says Steve Brand.  “It’s the first real indicator of what to expect in the important, late-season meets in May and June.” The Arcadia Invitational track meet at Arcadia High, east of Pasadena, begins this evening and by around 10 p.m. Saturday, April 6, more than 4,000 high school athletes will have ...

On April 17, 1937, John Fawcett of Coronado High came out of the chute on the straightaway at Chaffey High in Ontario and traversed 440 yards in 49.5 seconds. Fawcett handily won his one-turn race in the Chaffey Invitational and set a San Diego County record that would last nine years and a school record that ...

Reggie Bush’s high school career ended on a quiet note, but its brilliance probably outshone any other in the 42-year history of the San Diego Section. Bush scored 75 touchdowns and rushed for 60 touchdowns in three seasons.  He caught passes for nine TD’s, and returned 6 punt and kickoff returns for touchdowns. He even  punted ...

  St. Augustine’s 6-0 run through the San Diego Section, Southern California regionals, and CIF State championship game resulted in the Saints making a huge leap to overall  No. 10 in Cal-Hi Sports’ final rankings for 2012-13. Horizon finished No. 1 in Division V. The Saints were “On the Bubble”, meaning unranked, at the end of the regular ...

The memory of 10-28, 30-41, and 35-43 was erased with one 42-14. After three straight losses to Helix, including one in the San Diego Section Division II finals and another in the semifinals, Oceanside put up the right numbers and stunned the Highlanders, No. 2 in California and No. 25 in the U.S. “We were committed to ...

The circumstance and the stage may have made for the most defining athletic moment in St. Augustine’s 91-year history. It wasn’t that the Saints pulled away from San Francisco Sacred Heart Cathedral in overtime Saturday in Sacramento and won the State Division III championship, 59-52.  That would be second. No. 1 would be the gutty, cold-as-ice performance at ...

Helix’ 41-30 victory over Oceanside in a matchup of Cal-Hi Sports’ Nos. 1 and 2 Division II teams ranks among the all-time San Diego Section playoff games, not only for brilliance but for the bizarre. “It was a game for the ages,” wrote Tom Shanahan of The San Diego Union. Coach Gordon Wood’s Highlanders defended their 2000 ...

St. Augustine won the best 2 out of 5 with Cathedral Catholic. The Saints defeated the Dons with a 25-13 fourth quarter tonight and earned a berth in the Southern California regional finals Saturday at Colony High in Ontario. The final score was 55-45. Coach Mike Haupt’s team commanded the backboards and hit the big shots in ...