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San Clemente has become the Avocado League’s weathervane. La Costa Canyon, second ranked in this week’s Union-Tribune poll, will be the third Avo team in successive weeks to take on the Tritons, a respected Orange County entry just a few right or left turns and a modest hike up Interstate 5 from Oceanside (23 miles), Torrey Pines ...

Metropolitan League coaches doubled as classroom or physical education teachers, began  their school years with football practice in early September, jumped into winter basketball, and followed with baseball or track in the spring. That’s the way it was done at the area’s smaller schools. Year after year. So it was a little surprising when a line in ...

How decisive was top-ranked Helix’ shocking, 43-3 defeat at San Bernardino Cajon last week? Two-hundred, sixty-nine games decisive. You have to go back to the third contest of the 1996 season, a 41-0 Highlanders loss to El Camino, to find a more conclusive result. Only four others in the school’s storied, 68-season, 691-game history—41-0 to San Diego ...

Helix is number one, at least for the opening week. The Highlanders received 14 first-place votes and 262 points from the panel of 30 in the first Union-Tribune football poll coordinated by veteran prep honcho John Maffei. The Scots also were number one in the final 2017 vote: Rank Team 2017 Points Previous 1. Helix (14) 13-2 262 1 2. Torrey Pines (3) 7-5 236 4 3. Cathedral (8) 5-7 221 NR 4. Mission Hills (3) 12-1 198 2 5. Madison (1) 8-3 189 8 6. La Costa ...

Ray DeBolt of Granite Hills, a new school at the east end of Madison Avenue in El Cajon, won the San Diego Section mile championship on May 27, 1961. The victory gave DeBolt, who passed away in the recent months in Reno, Nevada, at age 75, the distinction of being the first section champion in his ...

Mystery surrounds Hoover’s basketball season. Someone, call the Shadow. The mythical sleuth, introduced to American radio audiences early in the decade, had gained so much popularity that a movie “The Shadow Strikes”  was released in 1937. The Shadow‘s alter ego Lamont Cranston, or more important, an enterprising newspaper reporter, would have determined why, after Hoover celebrated  the Coast ...

Class B teams were not junior varsities and not necessarily inferior to Class A (varsity) clubs. The B designation was based on exponents, which combined height, weight, and age.  It was not unusual for seniors to play on B squads. Under Coach Bruce Maxwell, Hoover ruled the B world, many times playing the feature, late game of ...

The best teams could be very disappointing, which is why a group of pickup-playing hoopsters almost stole the show. Eight Grossmont High students, with blistered feet, sore arms and legs, and with a burning desire to  get home and sleep, claimed a record for the longest game, ever. Basketball historians would argue the point, but not in ...

Some of the best performances by San Diego Section athletes at the 100th state track championships last week at Clovis Buchanan were provided by those who should be back for another shot in 2019. Alysha Hickey, second in the high jump at 5 feet, 8 inches, and the first area champion since 2015 with a 19-9 ...

The San Diego Section has not had an individual champion in the state meet since 2015 or a double winner since 2012. Eastlake’s Jalyn Jackson has a chance to reverse the trend this week in the 100th championships at Clovis Buchanan High. Jackson, fourth in the long jump and second in the triple jump in 2017, is ...

There would be raised eyebrows and at least one exclamation of “Really?” and another of “No Way!” should a copy of Charles Byrne’s Jan. 4, 1940, article in The San Diego Union have been placed in a time capsule and opened 20 years later. Basketball was evolving and moving indoors, although the game still was a ...

La Jolla, winner of 30 in a row, including 28 consecutive this season, was on the cusp of getting to a place no other team had gone. A 29-0 season was unprecedented. The only San Diego County team to come that close was the 1959-60 Hoover squad that won its first 26 (most reports say the Cardinals ...

There still are a couple weeks before league trials for most San Diego Section athletes, but distance runners are setting themselves up for the big meets in May. McKenna Brown of La Costa Canyon was beaten by Mariah Castillo of Saugus in a hot 1600-meter race in the Mt. San Antonio meet at El Camino College ...

San Diego Section boys’ 2018 best track and field performances through last week’s Mt. San Antonio meet, which was not held on the once-bucolic junior college campus in Walnut, instead moving about 40 miles West to El Camino College in Torrance. San Diego marks and their rankings in parenthesis are compared below to the best in ...

Oscar Foster never won an individual scoring championship at San Diego High, but Foster finished his legendary prep career with the San Diego Section record for most points. Consistent, often brilliant, Foster’s record was testimony to the popular, team player that he was. Foster passed away recently in Los Angeles at age 69, a victim for at ...

San Diego Section girls turned in season highs in five events and the boys in two at last week’s Arcadia Invitational. The section can boast the best mark or tie for the best mark in the state in one boys and four girls events. Torrey Pines’ McKenna Brown, who took the state lead in the1600-meter race at ...

Evening Tribune writer Roger Conlee said the Grossmont-Helix game was more a circus carnival (of errors), with everything but a pie-throwing contest. Conlee covered the Metropolitan League Southern Division contest that attracted about 1,200 persons to Grossmont’s “ancient, creaky arena.” Taking them one at a time: –The game started at 8:45 p.m. after a longer-than-usual junior varsity preliminary. ...

West Hills’ Cameron Barry led the San Diego Section, was tied for second in the state, and 10th nationally in scoring average, and 22nd in total points, according to Max Preps. Barry scored 866 points in 26 games.  His 33.3-point average is No. 3 all-time in San Diego County. Jc Canahuate of Army-Navy was second to ...

The warm days of spring aren’t here, but San Diego Section girls and boys performed above the temperature last Saturday in the season’s first major meet, Dennis McClanahan’s Mt. Carmel Invitational. McClanahan, the 35-years-plus coach at Mt. Carmel and former Helix shot putter and discus twirler, has built his late-March event into one of the top ...

Hoover’s 25-2 record and second consecutive San Diego Section Class AA championship did not reflect a season-long struggle to stay ahead of the Eastern League posse. Back-to-back league losses for the first time since 1957-58 and top-to-bottom league challenges, including one from rising Crawford, tested the Cardinals’ mettle. Coach Charlie Hampton’s team showed its grit, rebounding in ...