Even a truncated season with no playoffs and play restricted to league games will be cause for rejoicing, it says here.
The state CIF is scheduled to make a decision July 20 on whether there will be games in the fall.
Meanwhile, coaches and players wait.
Active top 10 in career victories:
NAME
YEARS
W-L-T
PCT
Rob Gilster
1989-2019 (31)
230-129-5
.639
Ron Hamamoto
1985-2019 (34*)
228-159-4
.588
Sean Doyle
1996-2019 (24#)
204-94
.685
Matt Oliver
Christian (20)
172-73-3
.700
Chris Hauser
2000-2019 (20*)
168-74-2
.693
Mike Hastings
1998-2019 (22)
148-105
.584
Rick Jackson
2004-2019 (16)
141-49-1
.741
Tom Karlo
Grossmont (15*)
108-65-2
.623
Joel Allen
The Bishop’s (11)
100-35-1
.739
Damon Baldwin
Ramona (15)
100-69-1
.591
*Coached at multiple schools (use Football/Coach 100 Club menu to see a complete list of coaches with at least 100 career victories and their schools).
#When Doyle became coach in 1996 school was known as University of San Diego High, and became Cathedral Catholic at a new campus in Carmel Valley in 2005.
TRY TO TOP THIS
Point Loma has had three head coaches in the last 75 seasons.
Don Giddings, later the school principal and the first principal at Patrick Henry, was 52-23-3 from 1946-54. Bennie Edens was 238-173-17 from 1955-97, and Mike Hastings is 148-115 since 1998.
QUICK KICKS
Jack Mashin was the first coach to win 100 games, when Grossmont defeated Oceanside, 21-6, in game 6 of the 1941 season… El Camino’s Mike Hobbs coached a San Diego Section record and maybe coached or tied a state record… Hobbs’ team
posted a 9-7 record in 2019…the 16 games played in one season have never been equaled in this area…other teams from San Diego played 15 games in the previous decade, but El Camino went one step further when it did not have a first-week bye and was forced to play four San Diego section playoff games before entering the state playoffs…after a 4-6 regular season, the Wildcats caught fire and won five in a row before bowing at Santa Rosa Cardinal Newman, 31-13, in the state III-AA championship game….
2020: Veteran Coaches Move On, Others Move Up
Address changes and new names represent most of the news-making activity these days in the San Diego Section as it pushes on to a critical date and still looking for light at the end of the pandemic tunnel.
The state CIF is scheduled to make a decision later in July on the 2020 future of football in California, but steps here were taken over the spring to position the men who will lead.
Nine new coaching assignments have been announced, including those for five veteran mentors who have moved on to other schools, according to prep writing honcho John Maffei of The San Diego Union and Max Preps.
NAME
NEW SCHOOL
PREVIOUS SCHOOL
REPLACED
Tyler Arciaga
Bonita Vista
Mar Vista
Sam Kirkland III
Jason Texler
Eastlake
San Marcos
John McFadden
Bryan Wagner
Hilltop
Sweetwater
Drew Westling
Will Gray
Hoover
Kearny
Zach Shapiro
Curtis Mays
Mar Vista
Tyler Arciaga
Kyle Williams
Poway
Westview
Scott Coats
Shane Graham
Rancho Buena Vista
Joe Meyer
Ervin Hernandez
Sweetwater
Bryan Wagner
Jason French
Westview
Kyle Williams
Kearny has not announced a replacement for Will Gray, who had a won-loss record of 34-25 from 2015-19.
Jason Texler has coached in the North and East County and now moves south to a strong program at Eastlake, succeeding John McFadden, who was 135-50-4 in 16 seasons.
Texler is 79-58-1 in 12 seasons over 16 years. He was 18-16 at El Cajon Valley from 2004-06, 5-15-1 at Escondido in 2010-11, and 56-27 at San Marcos from 2012-18.
Texler was an assistant on McFadden’s staff in 2019 and is a classroom teacher at the Chula Vista school.
Arciaga was 41-34 from 2013-19 at Mar Vista and comes from a coaching family. His father Bob Arciaga, was head coach at San Diego Southwest from 1978-80.
Wagner moves from Sweetwater to his alma mater, Hilltop, where he tied a County field-goal record of 53 yards in 1978 and eventually was a punter for nine seasons in the NFL, including 1994 with the San Diego Chargers.
Williams served at Westview since 2016.
1929: Coronado Steals Some Hilltoppers Thunder
San Diego High was on its fifth head coach in the last three seasons and found itself sharing headlines for the first time with a team not from Long Beach.
Coronado High, across San Diego Bay, was flexing muscles.
Controversy would follow.
John Perry left coaching after the 1926 season and was succeeded by John Hobbs in 1927 and Mike Morrow and Charlie Church in 1928, changes that were followed by a couple years of mediocrity.
The new coach was John Harold (Hobbs) Adams, a former standout USC lineman fresh from a head coaching stint at Monrovia High.
Adams played on Perry’s 1920 and ’21 San Diego High teams (in 2013 Adams was a second-team lineman on the all-time, all-San Diego County high school squad).
Hilltoppers won with Adams at helm.
Adams’s first team posted a 6-1 record, beaten only by archrival Poly, 20-13, in a Coast League battle before an estimated 13,000 persons in City Stadium.
After that game Coronado coach Amos Schaeffer, who attended the contest between the Hilltoppers and Jackrabbits, “challenged” the Long Beach team.
Under a CIF Southern Section rule, Coronado, a Group B (minor) school, could issue a challenge a Group A (major school).
PLAYOFFS OR BOWLS?
Media described the process and similar other midseason challenges as “playoffs”. In reality they were more like midseason “bowl” games. In effect the games helped the CIF project its postseason invitations.
Nov. 9 had been set aside as a date by the California Interscholastic Federation for challenge games open to all schools.
The CIF struggled for years to find a structured playoff format. Four teams, beginning play in a semifinal round, eventually were selected this season by Secretary Seth Van Patten, after the schools agreed to participate.
The Islanders, with Frank (Toady) Greene and Johnny Lyons leading 15 outmanned teammates, took the fight to mighty Poly, leading 7-6 with six minutes to play before bowing 20-7 in front of 7,000 spectators at Poly’s David Burcham Field.
Interestingly, the Los Angeles Times described a “courageous” Poly team, apparently the underdog, that came from behind to defeat the heralded and “classy Coronado eleven”.
The trans-bay squad finished with an 8-1 record, scored 415 points, and dominated the Southern Prep League, also known as the County league.
Greene set a standing state record with 11 touchdowns and 14 points after touchdown in a 108-0 victory over Sweetwater and held the school season scoring record with 164 points for 74 years. J.T. Rogan, playing in 11 games, broke Greene’s record in 2003.
Speculation was that San Diego and Coronado would meet in a postseason game for city bragging rights, but another CIF rule and prior scheduling by the teams prevented a showdown.
San Diego seemingly was set for a game on Thanksgiving day with Tucson High of Arizona after finishing runner-up to Poly in the Coast League and Coronado was rumored to be going into the Southern Section Group B playoffs.
None of those games materialized. Nor did a Nov. 9 San Diego High challenge to Fullerton, which instead played Brea. A San Diego challenge to Covina also fell through.
The only question was how many points Coronado would score, with Greene (left) and Lyons (right) leading the way.
COACH CALLS OUT CORONADO
Local fans had flooded media outlets with calls for a San Diego-Coronado showdown. The San Diego Sun reported that a game was in the works.
Adams reacted.
The Sun:
Herrick attempted to cool the Adams-stirred controversy, pointing out that “although noted for his impulsiveness, Adams claims he was misquoted.”
The Cavers and Islanders could have met on Nov. 9, since Coronado coach Schaefer, in attendance at the Oct. 26 Poly-San Diego battle in City Stadium, had informed Herrick that day that he would challenge the Jackrabbits-Hilltoppers winner.
ISLANDERS COACH FIRES BACK
incendiary remarks.
The affable mentor was just warming up:
THE COTTON TOP
Irvine (Cotton) Warburton has been honored as one of San Diego High’s all-time athletes, known throughout Southern California as a champion 440-yard runner, having won the state championship with a time of :49.6 in the spring and leading Hobbs Adams’ team in the fall with 10 touchdowns in seven games.
Warburton went on to become an All-America at USC and, like other Trojans athletes, went into the film industry. He won an Academy Award for cinematography in 1964 for Mary Poppins
COTTON SETS PACE
LONELY SAINTS
Out of the loop was St. Augustine High, coached by Herb (Duke) Corriere. The Saints were without a league affiliation and virtually without a country.
The Saints’ motto could have been “Have team, will travel. Expenses negotiable.”
The school at 32nd Street and Nutmeg also played by its own rules. San Diego High graduates Blas Torres and Harry Jones were standouts on this year’s squad, which posted a 7-3 record against teams from all over, several of which were not on the schedule Corriere announced in September.
There were 13 high schools in San Diego County, population approximately 210,000. Julian, Mountain Empire, Fallbrook and Ramona did not field teams. Others playing varsity football were Point Loma, La Jolla, Oceanside, Sweetwater, Grossmont, Escondido, and Army-Navy Academy.
Escondido principal Martin Perry convened a meeting of Southern Prep League honchos to protest a 6-6 tie with La Jolla. An apparent winning Escondido touchdown was disallowed by referee Glenn Broderick, who penalized the Cougars for having too many men on the field.
Perry and his coach, Harry Wexler, appealed on the basis that the offending player had not interfered with the game action and was yards away from the play.
Appeal denied.
POLY WINS COAST AND CIF
The large throng at City Stadium watched Long Beach Poly overcome San Diego, 20-13, with two late touchdowns the day after the stock market crash and earn the Coast League championship and trip to the playoffs.
Poly defeated Huntington Park, 7-6, and met Santa Barbara, 2-0 winner over Fullerton, for the CIF Group A championship. The Jackrabbits outran the Golden Tornado, 14-6.
The Los Angeles Times, quoting CIF boss Seth Van Patten, reported the next day that the game was on and that if Santa Barbara did not show the contest would be ruled a forfeit.
Coincidentally, the flu outbreak was revealed about the time big wigs from Santa Barbara were told the championship would be played at Poly’s Burcham Field. Neutral Wrigley Field and the Memorial Coliseum in Los Angeles were unavailable.
MERCY FOR ARMY-NAVY?
The Cavemen, or Hilltoppers, take your choice, scored all of their 27 points in the fourth quarter of a shutout at Army-Navy. Hobbs Adams played his reserves in the first three quarters.
Was the San Diego coach worried about blowback from earlier in the decade?
This was the first game between the teams since 1922. Adams was a member of John Perry’s 1920 squad that hung a 130-7 defeat on the Warriors. Two seasons later Army-Navy was on the short end of a 106-6 score.
NO BLAST
FOOTBALL IN MOUNTAINS?
It would be 1938 before the Bulldogs took the field in a regulation game.
TRUE GRID
1940: Firestorm Over Oceanside Transfers
Voices were raised, fists shook, and fingers pointed in a conference room at the downtown YMCA on Oct. 24 in a dustup over eligibility involving players who notoriously became known as the “Adopted Football Stars.”
Metropolitan League principals and coaches held a special meeting to consider the status of two “sensational Oceanside athletes,” Jimmy Bender and Bill Brazell.
All league schools except Coronado had representatives at the meeting, chaired by league president Earl Andreen of La Jolla and including vice president Clarence Swenson of Point Loma, CIF representative Martin Perry of Escondido, and secretary Darcie Anderson of Sweetwater.
After much discussion and bluster, the league bosses did nothing, instead launching a high, arcing punt into the lap of CIF Southern Section commissioner Seth Van Patten.
Brazell, described as a “rangy end”, joined the Pirates on Oct. 1 from Kilgore, Texas, and is said to have been taken under guardianship of one C.J. Heltibridle of Oceanside.
Bender, a triple threat back, arrived in Oceanside on Oct. 9, two days before a league game with Escondido.
Bender transferred from Sutton, Nebraska, a community of maybe 1,000 persons in the southeastern corner of the state. He apparently played in several games for the local high school before being “adopted” by a “cousin,” who lived in Oceanside.
On Oct. 11 “Benter”, as his name was first reported, punted, drop-kicked an extra point, ran the ball, and threw a pair of touchdown passes to Brazell in Oceanside’s 13-0 victory over Escondido.
Jimmy Bender’s punt was blocked by Sweetwater defender but recovered by Oceanside, after which Bender punted again in game that was protested by Sweetwater before kickoff.
EYEBROWS RAISED
Bender’s debut didn’t go unnoticed by league officials, who, after hearing complaints from coaches, began asking questions.
The players apparently were okay scholastically but would have to address the question of how they got to Oceanside. CIF rules stated that a “boy is ineligible unless there is a legal change of address by the parents or legal guardian.”
While the Metropolitan League waited to hear from Van Patten, the Pirates’ coach, Dick Rutherford, an entrepreneurial sort who also owned a farm in Vista and had experience as a wrestling referee, including professional matches at the San Diego Coliseum, defended his use of the players the following week against Sweetwater.
After a 27-18 loss, in which Bender ran 88 yards for one touchdown and passed for another, Rutherford more or less ignored questions about Brazell and said, not convincingly, that he was “playing Bender in good faith because we believe he is eligible.”
Sweetwater coach Cletis (Biff) Gardner had officially protested Oceanside’s playing of Bender and Brazell before the kickoff.
UNIONWRITER FIRED UP
A lengthy game account under no byline in San Diego’s morning newspaper the following day began thusly:
“With a furious display of gridiron power Sweetwater High’s rampaging Red Devils, keyed to a torrid fighting pitch, exploded the Jimmy Bender inflation at Oceanside High by roaring to a 27-18 victory over the Pirates in a hectic game on the Red Devil field.”
A week later, Bender figured in all three touchdowns, scoring two and passing to Brazell for another, in a 19-0 victory over Point Loma on a muddy field.
WAS BENDER “STASHED”?
The superintendent in Sutton, Nebraska, weighed in, expressing “bitterness” over the incident and “deploring” the fact that California schools could help themselves to young, midwestern athletes.
It also was reported that “newspapermen” in Sutton claimed that a Pacific Coast Conference university figured in a deal in which all expenses for Bender’s trip to Oceanside had been paid by an unknown party.
Coast Conference “czar” Edwin Atherton, a college fraternity brother of J. Edgar Hoover and former FBI agent and private investigator, was said to be looking into the charges.
Van Patten ruled against the transfers on Nov. 7, citing the suspicious nature in which the guardianships took place.
Coronado was unbeaten and won league championship for first time since 1932 as Dexter Lanois, Harry Galpin, Fritz Sandermann, and Stew (Junior) Worden (from left) fired the Islanders’ offense.
YOU’RE OUT
Messrs. Heltibridle and Bender’s sponsor, Harry Schwarz, had acted with the swiftness of a Nevada divorce.
Heltibridle became Brazell’s guardian on the day the youngster came from Texas and Schwarz filed papers in the San Diego County Courthouse to become Bender’s guardian on the day Bender played against Escondido.
Oceanside forfeited the Escondido and Point Loma victories and the players were done with two games remaining. Bender and Brazell were reported to be “continuing their studies” at Oceanside High.
HOMELESS
St. Augustine played all seven games on the road, as there was no campus facility and it was easier to schedule games if the Saints agreed to be the visiting team. They also continued as an independent with no league affiliation.
The Saints’ league status would be changed, slightly, in this decade. They would be part of a league of small County schools during World War II but their games did not count in the standings.
St. Augustine would join the Southland Catholic League in 1945, but that circuit was made up of schools in and around Los Angeles, which would create travel and financial problems for the small North Park school.
He didn’t know it at the time, but student leader and football player Harry Monahan would play a role the Saints’ finally gaining entry into a league of San Diego schools almost 20 years later.
Monahan attended Notre Dame University and became a sportswriter for the South Bend Tribune. He met Jack Murphy, sports editor of The San Diego Union, at a USC-Notre Dame game in 1953.
Monahan, who maintained his San Diego ties, eventually landed a position on Murphy’s staff. In the succeeding years Monahan worked with Murphy and St. Augustine principal John Aherne, among others, to get the Saints into the San Diego City Prep League. It happened in 1957.
There was no football field, or basketball arena, and no league for St. Augustine in 1940.
WAR CLOUDS
The Pearl Harbor attack was 14 months away, but future conflict was not far from anyone’s thoughts.
San Diego High’s starting center, Walter Anderson, left school after he was ordered to his national guard unit. Vista fullback Ralph Dominguez and his brother Rudy were called from school to report for Coast Guard patrol duty.
San Diego coach Joe Beerkle used a metaphor when asked about his team, declaring the Hillers’ 1940 outlook was “poorer than the prospect of peace in Europe.”
CAVERS, VIKINGS SEE DOUBLE
Hoover halfback Jim Morgan was the star of the second annual City Schools’ football carnival, running 30 yards for a touchdown against La Jolla and 27 yards for a score against San Diego.
The 4 city schools each played two quarters. The Hoover-Point Loma combine defeated San Diego-La Jolla 26-0.
Hoover topped La Jolla 7-0 and hammered the Cavers, 13-0. Point Loma’s Jim (Speedy) Finsters ran 88 yards in the Pointers’ 6-0 shutout of La Jolla.
A crowd of about 3,500 attended the carnival, which also included performances by various school bands, drum majors, and flag twirlers. The first carnival in 1939 was presented at the end of the season.
Chuck Deane (left) and all-CIF choice Dick Attig were bulwarks of Hoover line.
McEUEN LOCKS OUT FANS
Escondido coach Charlie McEuen’s contorted explanation for not allowing Cougars supporters to watch preseason practice: “Fans often get the wrong idea when they see a player in a practice session. These fans sometimes spread false information about a player that gets back to the boy.”
STADIUM IMPROVED
A new, two-level press box in Balboa Stadium was ready in time for football. It replaced “the old, wobbling, dangerous structure” and was built with funds supplied by the San Diego County Council and convention committee of the American Legion.
Lights had been installed in time for the season-ending carnival in 1939, but the first regular game after dark in Balboa Stadium took place this season when San Diego defeated Compton, 20-8.
BIG GAME ACROSS BAY
It wasn’t San Diego-Hoover or San Diego-Long Beach Poly. The game of the year was on quaint Coronado Island, usually accessed by a ferry ride from the foot of Market Street and Pacific Highway.
The undefeated Hemet Bulldogs, coached by former San Diego star Kendall (Bobo) Arnett, took on Hal Niedermeyer’s Coronado Islanders.
The Bulldogs, 4-0, were outscoring opponents 122-6, and led the Riverside League West Division. The Islanders, who had outscored their first four opponents, 110-12, were sparked by quarterback Harry Galpin and fullback Stew (Junior) Worden.
Arnett’s visitors took the game to Niedermeyer’s team, outgaining their green and white-clad hosts, but came up short, 14-0. Coronado never looked back, winning the Metropolitan League championship and posting an 8-0-1 record for the only unbeaten season in school history.
Hoover’s George Brown (65) tries to tackle Long Beach Poly’s Ed McNulty at goalline, but Jackrabbit quarterback scored in Poly’s 14-10 victory.
MUSTANGS RUN FREE, TOO
San Dieguito kept pace with Coronado among so-called small schools. The Encinitas entry, which opened in 1936, ruled the Southern Prep League.
John Eubank’s Mustangs, led by Leo Swaim, Max Hernandez, and Red Schmidt, clinched the league title with a 13-0 victory over Vista in Week 7 and defeated St. Augustine 14-0 the next week to finish with an 8-0 record, their only undefeated season before dropping football and being renamed San Dieguito Academy in 1996.
FIVE MAKE ALL-SOUTHERN TEAMS
Tackles Tom Balestreri of San Diego and Dick Attig of Hoover were on the all-Southern California first team. La Jolla tackle Tom Bossert made the second team, and center Chuck Clark of Escondido and Coronado halfback Stew (Junior) Worden were on the third team.
SEASON TO FORGET
San Diego High sustained its second losing season in the last three and only the third since 1914.
Coach Joe Beerkle temporarily lost starting fullback Joe Mathews and other players because of academic ineligibility, benched fullback Jack O’Connor for “insubordination,” and saw his best playmaker go down in the third game.
Mike Luizzi directed an offense that gained 362 yards and 20 first downs and completed 13 of 19 passes for two touchdowns in a 20-13, opening-game victory over the Pasadena Junior College Reserves.
Joe Matthews, Mike Luizzi, Bob Estavillo, and Jim Hodge (from left) lined up in San Diego High backfield.
Luizzi, a converted end, passed for two touchdowns the following week in a 20-8 victory over Compton, but disaster would hit the Cavers and Luizzi the following week.
Beerkle’s squad of 36 players boarded a bus at 9:30 on Saturday morning for a six-hour, 220-mile jaunt through dozens of towns and over the winding, precipitous “grapevine”, a steep strip of U.S. 99 that led to the San Joaquin Valley and often caused overheated radiators, burned out brake pads, or vapor lock.
The Bakersfield Drillers, coached by the legendary Dwight (Goldie) Griffith, had not lost since 1938, a run of 17 games, and they struck the Cavers with a power running game that featured misdirection plays and against-the-grain cut backs. San Diego was on its heels all evening.
The 35-13 loss was bad enough but the Cavers also lost Luizzi for the rest of the season with a fractured left arm on the last play of the game.
With Luizzi out, the Cavers enjoyed running the ball in a 37-18 rout of Glendale, led by first-year coach Ambrose (Amby) Schindler, star of the 1933 and 1934 Hilltoppers teams. Joe Mathews scored 4 touchdowns for San Diego.
Newspaper masthead serves as backdrop for San Diego High coaches Werner Peterson, head coach Joe Beerkle, and John Brose (from left) as Hilltoppers awaited their first-ever night game against Compton in Balboa Stadium.
RAINY DAYS AND FRIDAYS
Hoover and San Diego called off games because of fields drenched by recent rain.
The Cavers’ game with Los Angeles Cathedral would not be rescheduled. Hoover’s Coast League contest with Long Beach Poly was played a month later, the Jackrabbits improving to 7-0 before 3,500 at Hoover and clinching the Coast League title, 14-10.
“We didn’t have water wings handy and I couldn’t risk the chance of someone drowning,” explained La Jolla coach Marvin Clark, who postponed the Vikings’ game with Escondido. Most other County schools got their games in.
NO REST FOR CARDINALS
Hoover played the 1939 Southern California football champion and runner-up on successive weeks.
Cardinals coach Pete Walker took a traveling squad of 28 players to the Santa Fe Railway Depot for a 7:45 a.m. trip to Santa Barbara, where the Cardinals dropped a 15-12 decision the next afternoon to the playoffs’ second-place finisher of the year before.
The next week, at home, Hoover whipped 1939 champion Alhambra, 19-0, as Hub Foote raced 58 yards for one touchdown and Charlie Blackburn 83 yards for another.
Santa Barbara won the Southern California championship, defeating Whittier, 26-0.
SIGNS OF THE TIME
San Diego police chief Cliff Peterson was appointed by the Peace Officers’ Association of California to take part in a proposal to eliminate speed limits on state highways during daylight hours, with a limit of 40 miles an hour in night driving.
Chula Vista purchased land to build a $175,000 airport. Fred Rohr, who provided fuel tanks constructed in San Diego for Charles Lindbergh’s “Spirit of St. Louis” on its trans-Atlantic flight in 1927, founded Rohr Aircraft Company in Chula Vista in August.
The 10-round, boxing main event at the Coliseum featured Los Angeles’s “Blimp” Williams against the San Diego favorite, light-heavyweight Sailor Jack Coggins, who deflated the Blimp in the third round.
The largest sporting-event crowd in San Diego history took place on Labor Day, when 26,500 were on hand for the Del Mar Handicap at Del Mar Racetrack
Football was decades away but Julian High was vital to the community in the mountains east of San Diego.
TRUE GRID
UT-San Diego columnist Nick Canepa, a 1964 San Diego High graduate, was nephew of the late San Diego High star Mike Luizzi…Sweetwater’s Marcus Alonzo, a Metropolitan League sprint champ in the spring, closed his football career with 5 touchdowns in a 33-14 win over Escondido…Alonzo ran away with the league scoring title with 54 points…5,000 persons were on hand at Hoover as Sweetwater outgained Hoover 229-84 on the ground, 52-29 through the air, and recovered 8 Hoover fumbles but got out only with a 0-0 tie after the Cardinals’ Jim Morgan was wide on a 33-yard field goal attempt with a minute to play…Hoover end George Brown went on to become an all-America at the Naval Academy and played at San Diego State after World War II…Brown was team doctor for Don Coryell’s Aztecs in the 1960s and his son George was one of the leading shot putters in the nation at Granite Hills High and was a fullback on Coryell’s 11-0, 1969 team…15,000 persons in Balboa Stadium witnessed Hoover, trailing, 12-7, entering the final quarter, “get off the floor”, in Union writer’s Christy Gregg’s words, to beat the Hillers 21-12…weirdness included game officials turning on the lights when darkness descended, then turning them off after a meeting with coaches Beerkle and Walker at midfield… San Diego outgained the Cardinals, 216-109… Hoover’s Herbert (Hub) Foote starred at San Diego State after World War II and went on to a long coaching career in the area… Mike Foote, the coach’s son, was a standout at Mount Miguel High and Oregon State and played three seasons in the NFL with the Los Angeles Rams and Washington Redskins… what’s in a name?: Fallbrook’s fullback was Leroy (Speed) Lash… a Sweetwater lineman was “Waffles” Escalante… San Diego originally announced a midseason, nonleague game with the Riverside Sherman Institute but the game never was played… sluggish and blundering, the Hillers dropped their final game to Inglewood, 13-12, before 2,500 “refrigerated” fans in the stadium…a short-term member of the CIF Southern Section was the Instituto Tecnio Indusrial, also known as Tijuana Tech in the Baja California city….
2020: San Diego Squad Part of No. 3 All-Time College Team
As the year ended last week USA Today listed its best 150 teams in the 150-year history of collegiate football.
Standing third behind the 1943 and 1945 Army squads, was the University of California “Wonder Team” of 1920.
No less than seven players from the national champion, 12-0 San Diego High Hilltoppers of 1916 played for that California team and coach Clarence (Nibs) Price was an assistant on the staff of head coach Andy Smith.
The 1920 Golden Bears were 9-0, outscored their opponents, 520-14, and defeated Ohio State, 28-0, in the Rose Bowl game.
Halfback Byron (Pesky) Sprott was the Bears’ leading rusher in the New Year’s Day contest in Pasadena, rushing for 95 yards in 20 carries and scoring two touchdowns.
To learn more about Sprott and his 1916 teammates who went on to play for California, google partletonsports.com or San Diego Sports History and search 1916: “The Legendary Hilltoppers”.
2019 Week 17: A Wrap On Football Season
The San Diego Union-Tribune’s last poll, including San Diego Section playoffs:
First-place votes in parenthesis. NR–Not ranked. *Includes forfeit win.
RANK
TEAM
RECORD
POINTS
PREVIOUS
1.
Helix (31)
11-1
310
1
2
Carlsbad
10-2
269
2
3.
Oceanside
11-3
212
NR
4.
Cathedral
8-3
207
3
5.
St. Augustine
8-3
168
4
6.
Lincoln
10-3*
144
7
7.
El Camino
8-6
119
NR
8.
The Bishop’s
12-1
64
9
9.
Steele Canyon
9-2
58
5
10.
Mission Hills
9-3
54
6
Others receiving votes: La Jolla (9-4, 22 points), Madison (7-5, 22), Scripps Ranch (10-0, 10), Santana (1`1-2, 1), Torrey Pines (6-6, 1).
Voting panel of 31 sportswriters, sportscasters, various County football honchos:
John Maffei, San Diego Union-Tribune
Jim Lindgren, Rick Hoff, Terry Monahan, Don Norcross, Thomas Gutierrez, freelance contributors.
Paul Rudy, Brandon Stone,Ted Mendenhall, KUSI Chl. 51
Adam Paul, ECpreps.com
Ramon Scott, EastCountySports.com
Bodie DeSilva, sandiegopreps.com
Taylor Quellman, The Mighty 1090
Steve Brand, San Diego Hall of Champions
Troy Hirsch, Kaylyn McMakin, Tabitha Lipkin, Fox 5, San Diego
Rick Smith, PartletonSports.com
Jerry Schniepp, John Labeta, Ron Marquez, CIF San Diego Section
Joe Heinz, Coordinator, Athletics, Sweetwater School District
Raymond Brown, sdfootball.net
Bob Petinak, free lance.
John Kentera, Brandon Suprenant, 97.3 FM The Fan
Steve (Biff) Dolan, Mountain Country 107.9 FM
Mike Dolan, John Carroll, San Diego Section Tournament Directors.
Christian Pederson, SoCal Prep Insider.
Joe Heinz, Athletics Director, Sweetwater School District.
Eric Williams, WBK Sports/San Diego Friday Night Lights Magazine.
HOW OTHERS IN CALIFORNIA SAW SAN DIEGO’S TOP 10 AT SEASON CONCLUSION:
Team
Record
Cal.Preps.Com
Max Preps
Cal-Hi Sports
Helix
11-2
56.9
12
15
Carlsbad
10-2
53.4
19
23
Oceanside
11-4*
46.3
37
34
Cathedral
8-3
53.0
20
24
St. Augustine
8-3
46.9
28
30
Lincoln
10-3*
42.9
47
50
El Camino
9-7
38.3
70
NR
The Bishop’s
12-1
32.6
100
NR
Steele Canyon
9-2
36.6
75
NR
Mission Hills
9-3
44.9
37
Honorable Mention
Unranked state Division IV- A finalist La Jolla finished with 10-5 record, and respective ratings of 24.9, 158, and NR.
Cal Preps.com and Max Preps ratings are based on computer algorithms. Cal-Hi Sports ratings are product of publisher Mark Tennis’ eye test and information from Tennis’ correspondents throughout the state.
