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Idleness breeds contempt or a drop in the ratings. Mission Hills has fallen from ninth to 11th in Cal-Hi Sports’ state top 25, partly because the Grizzlies drew a bye in the first round of the San Diego Section playoffs last week. Also byed last week, Helix remained 12th.  Cathedral  and St. Augustine  are on the bubble after they, ...

 Hoover principal Floyd Johnson was going to hold the line. His school was the technical host for the annual game with San Diego High in Balboa Stadium and after the throngs of recent years Johnson vowed to close sales “when the 27,000th ticket is sold.” Johnson said that he did not want to revisit the “turmoil” attendant ...

Although about two-touchdown underdogs, coach Bill Bailey’s San Diego Hilltoppers took a 12-0 lead into the fourth quarter of the Southern California championship game. It would not be enough.  The Hillers sustained a third consecutive loss in the finals, following defeats of the 1925 and 1933 clubs. Favored Santa Monica rallied for a 13-12 victory before 26,601 ...

Undefeated Mission Hills was an almost wire-to-wire, regular-season winner in the Union-Tribune writers’ poll, but the Grizzlies are seeded only third behind Helix and St. Augustine in the Open Division of the San Diego Section playoffs, which begin this week.   Power ratings, introduced three years ago,  base a team’s strength on a number of factors,  most visible ...

The regular season is finished, playoffs are about to begin, and who claimed league championships? AVOCADO EAST                                                                               ...

Helix picked up 4 additional first place votes in this week’s Union-Tribune poll and now has eight, half the total of front running mission Hills, which remained No. 1 for the ninth consecutive week and moved into top 10 in the weekly Cal-Hi Sports‘ state rankings.   The Highlanders, ranked 13th by Cal-Hi Sports, have trailed Mission Hills since a ...

City schools experimented with a schedule of Saturday games for one week. At the same time it was revealed that the board of education had supplemented schools’ associated student body accounts with $49,000 since the ban on night games began in 1974. The school board said it hoped to determine whether parents and students would prefer games ...

An outstanding run by Sweetwater, starting in the 1960s, actually was just beginning. The Red Devils went 12-1, won a championship for the first time since 1972 and launched a 36-game winning streak. They would claim another title in 1985 and posted an ’80-’87 record of  80 wins and 11 losses, 73-9-2 under coach Gene Alim. Starting in 1968, David ...

Business has picked up at Kearny, where the Komets have won three in a row and can finish the regular season with their best record since 2011. Takoda Browne, who has scored touchdowns by running, receiving,  kickoff, punt, and pass interception returns, and two-point conversion attempts,  leads the San Diego Section with 23 touchdowns and 142 points ...

Action above, including Long Beach Poly’s 52-6 loss to Concord De La Salle, has resulted in Mission Hills and Helix getting another boost in Cal-Hi Sports newsletter’s unofficial, weekly state rankings by division. Mission Hills is 10th and Helix 11th in Division I, partly because Poly dropped from eighth to 13th.  The Grizzlies and Highlanders were 12th and ...

Losing had become an unshakable habit for Coronado. It had come to this for the Islanders:  Point Loma essentially begged them to play a scheduled game. Outscored, 104-0, in the season’s first four games, down to maybe 17 able-bodied players, and facing a strong city school, Coronado was thinking long and hard about exposing its athletes to another gridiron ...

Sixteen teams, divided by two upper and lower brackets made for the largest postseason in San Diego Section history. What had gotten into the CIF bosses? They had repeatedly recited the dubious mantra that the playoffs made the season too long and were a “major” reason for bolting the Southern Section. To win a Southern Section championship, teams ...

Valley Center’s Rob Gilster can tie Dick Haines this week for ninth place among the winningest coaches in  San Diego Section history. The 32-21, Valley League  victory over Fallbrook last week was Gilster’s 193rd.  The veteran mentor moved from 11th to 10th place earlier this season when he passed Carl Parrick with victory No. 191. Gilster is second to the 203 victories of ...

Richard Morgan Hill, 62, passed away recently at Grossmont Hospital. Few people would recognize the name.  He preferred being called Rick but was even better known to a couple generations of fans and media around here as “Red” Hill. Helix High  coach Mike Muirhead introduced me to this Tom Sawyer-looking teenager  in 1970, when I still was covering high school track ...

Wither, Oceanside? The 45-0 loss to Mission Hills last week shook the foundation of the dynastic program at the school overlooking the intersection of old U.S. 101 and Interstate 5. It’s one thing to get blown out, but even in losses the Pirates have usually managed to score. Their dominance in  the  North County, though being challenged the last few years ...

Nonleague and intersectional games just about out of the way, 16 of the San Diego Section’s 19 leagues swing into action this week. The Eastern, Metro Pacific and Metro South Bay tee up next week. El Camino, 5-0, for the first time since 2000 in the days when Herb Meyer had the Wildcats on an 18-game winning streak, ...

Two readers of our website looked at our table showing  13 San Diego Section high school graduates in the NFL and found a couple glaring errors. The NFL list of 1,696 players also included safety Tony Jefferson of Eastlake and kicker Jason Myers of Mater Dei, which we missed. We also were alerted  to Larry Warford, but Warford graduated from ...

Glacier-like movement in the Union-Tribune Top 10 continued this week with small action taking place in the bottom rungs. Many teams are observing byes as league play edges onto the stage.  Almost all  will be so engaged in a couple weeks. St. Augustine’s home game against Vista Murrieta represents one of the few intersectionals remaining.  The Saints dropped a 15-13 decision ...

Helix is one of 12 schools in the country with at least 4 alumni players who made 2015 opening-day rosters in the NFL. Thirteen San Diego Section graduates were active, down from the 16 of 2013, the last year we published this information from the NFL Communications Department. Reggie Bush, Levine Loiolo, Alex Smith, and Jamar Taylor also ...

The Watergate break-in and burglary in Washington, D.C., still was about nine months from taking place, but spying and potential dirty tricks already were part of a fierce Eastern League rivalry. St. Augustine’s defending San  Diego Section champion was scheduled to play Patrick Henry, the city’s “elite”, newest public school, one that quickly had become thought ...