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Madison has a State Bowl III Championship date with Kentfield Marin Catholic at 4 p.m. next Saturday  at Cal State Dominguez Hills in Carson. The Warhawks (13-1) advanced after a pulsating, 21-17, come-from-behind victory at Monrovia (12-3), which managed to shackle Madison’s big-play weapons,  outgained the visitors 448 yards to 119, and led until a 91-yard kickoff return ...

Santa Fe Christian’s first venture into the State bowl regional playoffs was against Arcadia Rio Hondo Prep, a Southern California small schools power  for almost 40 years. ‘Hondo had won 10, eight-man championships and was runner-up four times since 1973 before moving up to 11-man football. But Santa Fe Christian fought to a come-from-behind, 30-28 victory over ...

Will history repeat? Madison will play at Monrovia in the Division III State Bowl playoffs this week in the first playoff ever matching a San Diego Section team against one from the Southern Section. San Diego’s last playoff appearance as a member of the Southern  Section was in 1959. San Diego High’s 53-0 victory over Monrovia for the Southern ...

The headline below  screamed at the top of the lead sports page in The San Diego Union on Nov. 13, 1945. The Scholastic Statistical Bureau  of New York, “which every week rates the performances of thousands of high school grid aggregations throughout the country,” selected coach Bill Bailey’s team as No. 1 in the country, according to ...

From the Nov. 24, 2012, UT-San Diego: –Writer John Maffei, at Mission Hills’ 42-17 victory over San Pasqual: “The fog was so thick that the Grizzlies and San Pasqual looked as if they were playing in clam chowder.” –Dennis Lin, at Lincoln’s 20-7 win over undefeated Olympian: “Looking like some shrouded figure stepping out of an action ...

Not exactly modern hard rap, but school administrators weren’t amused when they heard students in the San Diego High cheering section “dissing” their  Hoover counterparts. The Hilltoppers sung to the tune of an old Army field artillery ditty, “Over hill, over dale, we will hit the dusty trail…as those caissons go rolling along”. With apologies to Tom Ables, San Diego High, ...

Oct. 5 was bearing down on Kearny High football coach Darrell Smith.  His team would play the first football game in school history, a night game no less, at Coronado High against the Islanders’ junior varsity. Problem. An important component of the  Komets’ uniform was missing, caused by a delay in shipment  by the manufacturer. Coronado coach Hal ...

Cathedral’s honored program took a body blow this week when the Dons were forced to forfeit eight victories in an 8-2 season and were knocked out the postseason. The Dons self-reported an ineligible player, who appeared in all 10 Cathedral games. San Diego Section rules state that a team with three forfeits cannot participate in the ...

And then there were 40. Twenty teams were eliminated in first-round, San Diego Section playoff games last week. There were no upsets but maybe a mild surprise or two. Army-Navy, 10-0 and coming off the best regular season in the school’s 102-year history, was knocked out by Calipatria, 41-21, in Division IV. The teams had one common opponent. Army-Navy ...

More than 400 members of the San Diego County Football Officials’ Association, including four active NFL game officials, gathered at the Hall of Champions this week for their annual awards dinner. Among those attending were referee Mike Carey (University High/Santa Clara University), back judge Don Carey (St. Augustine/California-Riverside), umpire Garth DeFelice (Patrick Henry/San Diego State), and ...

Oceanside won the regular-season poll and could end up meeting No. 2 Helix in the AA finals at Escondido High in four weeks. And dust is kicking up in the  sand dunes around Glamis as the Imperial Valley girds a for a possible second-round meeting of two area big shots. Brawley (9-1) has a first-round bye in Division ...

The most important letter in the alphabet was V. World War II was nearing the halfway point.  The dark days of early 1942 had receded and Victory, while not in sight, would come. V had become a symbol, visible everywhere throughout the country. There were hundreds of references, from military training programs (V-12), to graphics on sporting ...

“Elevator! Elevator! We got the shaft!” The age-old shout from unhappy cheering sections, usually directed at game referees, was leveled by head coach Dick Haines and Vista partisans at nine coaches charged with seeding and selecting teams for the San Diego Section playoffs. The mentors, reportedly by an 8-1 vote, nominated San Dieguito as the twelfth and ...

You could call it the “Battle of Banner Grade.” Or, as the father of the Julian coach says, “It’s kind of a Cal-Stanford Big Game.” Coach Tim White, the son of University of California alum and legendary San Diego Chargers lineman Ed White,  guided his Julian Eagles to two touchdowns in the final four minutes and then saw his ...

The chapter on football would be very brief in the history of the Army and Navy Academy and its history goes back to 1910. They turn out soldiers and sailors at the boarding school on Highway 101 in Carlsbad. So old and new Warriors have snapped to attention.  Coach Frank Henry’s Cadets improved their season record to ...

Oceanside held sway for the fifth consecutive week in the renamed U-T San Diego poll of sportswriters and sportscasters. The San Diego newspaper recently acquired the North County Times, which created the poll. John Carroll’s Oceanside Pirates routed Vista 44-0 in a game that was played in less than two hours because of a running clock  ...

Duane Maley felt like the guy who discovered that his wallet had been lifted after being jostled in a crowded theater. Maley  ended up on the wrong side of the coin minutes after conclusion of a tight, competitive City Prep League season.  Maley’s San Diego Cavemen and Walt Harvey’s La Jolla Vikings, each with a 5-1 ...

Army-Navy, Grossmont, Olympian, and Otay Ranch continue to win, each improving to a 6-0 won-loss record.  Calexico, Patrick Henry, Hoover, and West Hills all were beaten after winning their first five games. Army-Navy scored a 1-0, forfeit win over Calvin Christian.  Grossmont defeated Granite Hills, 48-6.  Olympian beat El Capitan, 41-6, and Otay Ranch topped Bonita ...

It has been said for years  that San Diego produces many  of the best of the best players, but falls short when matching up with teams from North of the County line. That holds true in 2012. Not counting Imperial County members, San Diego Section squads were 29-25-2  in pre-league intersectional games this season, but many ...

This could become a habit.  Vista won another 2-0 game. The Panthers defeated Torrey Pines, with a safety the only score in the game last week. It was the second safety-only game in the 758  Vista has played since the school opened in 1937.  Not a trend, but the Panthers are working on it. Vista last won 2-0 when it defeated ...