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The Hoover Cardinals earned their seventh trip in 10 years to the San Diego Section finals last night, overcoming the deep and long San Marcos Knights, 68-63. Hoover (28-5) takes on La Costa Canyon (27-4) Saturday in Viejas Arena for the San Diego Section II championship.  The Cardinals defeated the Mavericks 56-55 earlier in the season. After ...

Attendance for afternoon games involving city teams was noted weekly in newspaper stories, for the first time in years.  Prep writers had gotten out of the habit. An edict that forced city schools to play home games in the afternoon resulted in some actual figures, as in counting the house, one by one. A total of 326 ...

St. Augustine students residing in “The Pit,” were off their game last night. When the score reached 79-20, the vocal cheering section in a  corner of the Saints’ tiny gymnasium began serenading visiting Mar Vista players with “This game is over!  This game is over!” The game actually was over barely a minute after it began, the ...

San Diego High was in the playoffs and San Dieguito was out. Oops, San Dieguito was  in and San Diego was out. The seeds of a legislative tempest had germinated in the spring when the San Diego Section Coordinating Council requested that the County Football Coaches’ Association prepare an analysis of the 1973 playoffs. Point Loma’s Bennie Edens, ...

Will it be once every 57 years? That’s how long it took El Cajon Valley High to win its first league basketball championship, a feat not accomplished since the school opened in the 1955-56 school year. The Braves (19-8) have yet to enter the UT-San Diego basketball poll Top 10 but  their exploits have created a stir ...

It was a question never answered, because it seldom was asked. Which was the better team? The 25-1 San Dieguito Mustangs, who won the Class A championship, or the tradition-rich, 24-3 Hoover Cardinals, who won the AA title in the 1960-61,  first season of the CIF San Diego Section . Some 50 years later a reader of ...

FIRST TEAM OFFENSE Quarterback Ezell Singleton San Diego 1958 Running Backs C. R. Roberts Oceanside 1953 Tyler Gaffney Cathedral Catholic 2008 Darrin Wagner Lincoln 1987 Receivers Patrick Rowe Lincoln 1986 Art Powell San Diego 1954 Line Jack Harrington Rancho Buena Vista 1988 Lincoln Kennedy Morse 1988 Steve Riley Castle Park 1968 Robbie Coffin Mira Mesa 1983 Steve Vieria Carlsbad 1999 Athletes Deron Johnson San Diego 1955 Charlie Powell San Diego 1950 Reggie Bush Helix 2002 Bill Fudge El Capitan 1970 FIRST TEAM DEFENSE Line Ed Imo Kearny 1973 La’Roi Glover Point Loma 1991 Tamasi Amituani Vista 1988 Arthur Smith Lincoln 1963 Linebackers Junior Seau Oceanside 1986 Pisa Tinoisamoa Vista 1998 Greg Slough Point Loma 1964 Travis Hitt Grossmont 1971 Secondary Marcus Allen Lincoln 1977 Willie Buchanon Oceanside 1968 Monte Jackson St. Augustine 1970 Eric Allen Point Loma 1982 Athletes Dave Grayson Lincoln  1956 Dokie Williams El Camino 1977 Darnay ...

With nine days until the first round of San Diego Section playoffs,  Cathedral Catholic still is No. 1. UT-San Diego’s CIF basketball ratings did not change from the previous week. One through 10, no one moved up or down, although Army-Navy cleared up a nettling mark on its record. The Warriors, 21-4 and ranked second, defeated La Jolla ...

Army-Navy, gathering steam behind the long, shot-blocking, 7-foot, 1 inch Cheikh N’Diaye and slick-shooting guard Devin Watson now is second in the UT-San Diego boys’ basketball poll. N’Diaye had six blocked shots and 20 rebounds to with his 20 points and Watson scored 29 as the Warriors eased past Santa Fe Christian 64-53 in a Coastal ...

San Diego had two teams in the Southern California finals and another poised to advance, but neither could get over the hurdle. Three losses by the area’s best, based on enrollment size, made for a  bitterly disappointing end to a difficult and unprecedented season, made uneven and often unimportant by the invasion of a virus known ...

A silent killer loomed. Discovered in February in a Southern China province, a virus that  became known as the Asian Flu hit area teams with full force several months later. The germ spread to Singapore, then was transported by U.S. Naval personnel, reaching the shores of the Pacific Coast in June. The virus spread across the country in the ...

Polls are great, but what do they mean come playoff time? First things first: Cathedral hung on to first place in the UT-San Diego basketball poll, but for the first time since the 2013 calendar the Dons were not  unanimous choices. Cathedral received 8 first-place votes after an uneven week in which it was surprised by Army-Navy 67-61 ...

The Handyman set aside his tools when one job was finished and was preparing to use them in another. Gene Edwards’s 29-year run as head coach at La Jolla ended with a 27-0 victory over Clairemont. He was going to continue working for the school in a role best described as “facilities fixer-upper.” Gene had accepted a position ...

January, 1958,  was  special  for Tom Shaules, for St. Augustine High, and for basketball in San Diego. That wintry month annually signals the anniversary of Shaules’  epic run through the City Prep League. The 5-foot, 8-inch senior scored a record 60 points against Crawford, led the Saints in three games in which they scored more than ...

The UT-San Diego boys’ basketball ratings deadline came a few hours early yesterday.  Disaster struck a little later for the No. 1,  and No. 5 teams. Cathedral Catholic was stunned by No. 6 Army-Navy, 67-61, as 7-foot, 1-inch Cheikh (Chay) Ndiaye (En-die) dominated the shorter but quick Dons with a 25-rebound-22-point-10-blocked-shots performance in the Martin Luther ...

Scott Webb and Jim Arnaiz weren’t joined at the hip.  It was more like at the leg. Together three varsity seasons at Helix High, they would be inducted together into the school’s  Hall of Fame  in 2005. Webb quarterbacked the Arnaiz-coached  Highlanders to a 12-1 season and the San Diego Section AAA championship in 1982. The championship in ...

Morse’s 31-28 victory over Orange Glen in the 3-A finals ranks among the most exciting of all San Diego Section championship games. And that game followed Rancho Buena Vista’s 21-10, 2-A victory over San Pasqual, climaxing Rancho’s meteoric rise in the school’s second season. Long runs, NFL-style passing, and  two of the County’s all-time coaches, David Lay ...

The play on words certainly was not original. Roger Conlee and I referred to Bob Speidel as “The Watchman”, in reference to his last name and to the company that made millions of timepiece wrist bands. But Speidel was in the forefront of basketball coaches in the early years of the San Diego Section.  He guided Helix ...

Lincoln coach Vic Player, on his 100th career victory: “It’s wonderful to reach a milestone and be considered among the elite coaches in San Diego County.  It’s great to be up there with coaches I admired when I was young and first came to San Diego from Chicago, people like Duane Maley (San Diego), Bennie Edens ...

After five weeks of nonleague games and tournaments in far-flung locations, San Diego Section basketball teams begin the run to the playoffs in earnest this week. Cathedral emerged as the frontrunner in the third UT-San Diego poll with all 13 possible first-place votes.  The Dons got a head start on most other clubs when they opened ...