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The CIF came up with an unusual pairing this week: teams representing the same section and which should have intimate knowledge. Intimate knowledge was denied, because COVID canceled a Highlanders-Crusaders match in Week 3. There is shared common knowledge, however. Mater Dei defeated Otay Ranch, 41-7, and St. Augustine, 35-0. Helix beat the former, 29-14, and the ...

Cathedral has won its last two Southern California Division I-AA playoff games, 35-28 in 2016 and 24-21 in 2018, each time at home against Harbor City Narbonne. In attempting to win a third the Dons will head 70 miles North Friday to play Orange Lutheran, a four-loss team that was fifth in its league, at Orange ...

We’re on holiday, in the process of enriching the Las Vegas economy, so this will be short, in more ways than one. This week’s fearless, if not peerless, Division I-V predictions: D-I, Lincoln 31, Helix 20.  Can’t go against my alma mater. D-II, Scripps Ranch 38, La Jolla 35. I live in the community of three million eucalyptus ...

I went out on a very unstable limb last week and crashed. Picking Torrey Pines to beat Carlsbad and Mission Hills to knock off Cathedral not only was ill-advised but was punctuated with an in-your-face (mine) combined, 82-17 score  by the winning teams. Now we have a championship that brings together two clubs representing, on paper, the ...

The Cavers were out of sorts. San Diego High finished with an 18-8 record, its poorest since the 17-10 of 1950, and the Cavers lost four games in a row down the stretch to fall out of City Prep League and playoff contention. According to Don King’s Caver Conquest, the athletic history of the school, the streak ...

Round two of the San Diego Section playoffs offer quarterfinals in Divisions I-V and semifinals in the  Open Division. The four clubs in the highest bracket, beginning play after a week off:  4 TORREY PINES (6-3) @1 CARLSBAD (10-0) The Falcons get another shot at the unbeaten Lancers, a team Torrey Pines had on the ropes, 33-27, only ...

Track and field made a  leap with multiple outstanding performances in several events. All five area qualifiers scored points in the greatest state meet in history, witnessed by about 4,500 persons on a 100-degree day in Chico. —Coach Raleigh Holt’s Hoover Cardinals won another City Prep League championship with depth in every race, jump, and throw, ...

League championships can be forgotten amid the giant second season of playoffs. if a team has a pulse, no matter how few W’s and how many L’s, it’s most likely a postseason participant. But don’t pass that along to the San Diego Section’s regular-season winners. Players identify these achievements on their letter jackets, coaches enhance their resumes, ...

Big Brother split with Little Brother in two traditional games last week. Younger Helix made it a quarter century of continued success with a 25th consecutive win over older Grossmont, 29-14, and older Mira Mesa topped younger Scripps Ranch, 38-35. Helix now is 46-18-2 against Grossmont since 1951, when the fledgling school divided enrollment and geographic borders ...

Grossmont is going to beat Helix one of these years.  Maybe this week. The way things have gone the last 40-odd that’s a lukewarm maybe. The teams will meet for the 66th time with host Helix holding a 45-18-2 record in the all-time series. A victory for the Foothillers over their so-called younger sibling took place so long ...

Three neighborhood rivals with long histories resume their versions of trench warfare this week. Chula Vista and Sweetwater, 2.9 miles apart and the oldest schools south of the San Diego city limits, play for the 74th consecutive year in a chain that began when Chula Vista opened in 1947. The Spartans lead the Red Devils, 39-33-3, in ...

Another outstanding San Diego High team (27-4) was unexpectedly bounced from the playoffs but Grossmont won a Southern Section championship, joining the similarly successful 1951 squad. Only one team from each league was invited to the playoffs, so Hoover was a non-participant despite a record that was a reported 24-4. San Diego junior Deron Johnson was Southern ...

It didn’t have much influence on John Maffei’s Union-Tribune Top 10 poll through Week 7, but the Carlsbad-Torrey Pines game, a last-second, 34-33 win for coach Thadd MacNeal’s unbeaten Lancers, rates as the game of the year and easily the best since the pandemic. Sophomore quarterback Julian Sayin drove the Lancers 90 yards in the waning ...

The lower classifications held sway. Grossmont was the Southern Section team champion in Class B and most of the area’s future Class A champions were underclassmen, at least a year or two away. Hoover was enjoying a period of dominance in CPL dual meets, routing San Diego, 64 1/3-39 2/3.  Grossmont also defeated the Cavers, 79 5/6-24 ...

Carlsbad will be at  an interesting juncture as the regular season turns to the second half and the Lancers riding a 10-game winning streak. At 5-0, duplicating its record in the pandemic 2020 campaign and 5-0 starts in 2013 and 2007, coach Thadd MacNeal’s team will try to become  6-0 for the first time since 2006 ...

By three points, Carlsbad retained its lead over Cathedral, 226 points to 223 and will sit out this week with a bye. John Maffei’s weekly The San Diego Union-Tribune Top 10: First place votes in parenthesis.  Points on scale of 10 points to 1 point. RANK TEAM/RECORD POINTS PREVIOUS 1. Carlsbad 5-0 (13) 226 2 2. Cathedral 3-2 (11) 223 1 3. Lincoln 3-1 191 3 4. Mater Dei 3-0 167 4 5. Torrey Pines 3-1 133 6 6. Mission Hills 3-2 129 5 7 Scripps Ranch 4-0 82 7 8. Helix 3-1 55 10 9. Madison 3-1 52 8 10. Eastlake 3-1 33 9 OTHERS RECEIVING VOTES Mt. Carmel (4-0, 12 pts), ...

San Diego High, for decades the No. 1 team in Southern California baseball, was undefeated and favored to win an 11th CIF championship. Until…. The Hillers, as they were most often called (besides Cavemen, Cavers, and Hilltoppers) during the era, lost a quarterfinals playoff to a team it had beaten, handily, twice before. This San Diego team had ...

Cathedral coach Sean Doyle, whose team fosters a we’ll-play-anyone-anytime-anywhere mantra, gets another test this week against perhaps the most honored team in Califoria prep history. The Dons, recovering fast from their disaster in Week  2 at Corona Centennial, blitzed Helix, 52-0, last week and head North to play Concord de La Salle, which has a 4-0 ...

San Diego High bounced back with a 7-0 dual-meet record after a mediocre season in 1953 and finished fourth in the CIF Southern Section championships. It was a fitting farewell for coach Bill Patten, whose teams annually were among the best in Southern California since he became head coach in 1944. Patten’s teams posted a 61-6-1 record ...

The school named for Mabel E. O’Farrell was created in 1957 and opened in 1959 as a junior high, became a School of Performing Arts, and now operates under the tony brand of “The O’Farrell Charter School.” The Falcons got on the favored side of the scoreboard for the first time last week. After 18 consecutive losses ...