A quarter-century ago, Brian Peabody (now the men’s basketball coach at Pima Community College) was the boys’ coach at Salpointe High School. He was then (and remains today) a real go-getter. For the entire month of June, he would run youth basketball camps in the daytime and high-school sum…
I HOPE that the Dallas Cowboys lose on Thanksgiving Day. For decades, the National Football League has given Dallas a ridiculous, built-in advantage by allowing them to play a home game on Thanksgiving Day. That means that their opponent has to overcome the double handicap of having to play …
It only took a couple hours for six months’ work to come crashing down around Dezmen Roebuck and his Marana High School football teammates. Just a couple weeks earlier, the Tigers seemed like a sure bet to make it to the state tournament. They sat in the 10th spot in the Arizona Interscholas…
Navine Mallon comes from an athletic family. Her older sister, Karena Garcia, was a multi-sport athlete at Flowing Wells. Garcia just graduated from Smith College, where she had competed in cross country and basketball for four years. Navine (pronounced Nuh-veen) also has a brother, Talon Fi…
The casual observer would have declared last Saturday’s Arizona-Cal football game to be uglier than Steve Buscemi’s Less-Attractive Brother. But to the members of the Wildcat football program and all of their die-hard fans, it was a work of art. It was the Mona Lisa sitting near Monet’s Wate…
So, for a high-school athlete, what could be greater than winning back-to-back state championships in the sport that you love and at which you excel? The answer is going back-to-back-to-back and grabbing a third consecutive state crown. And, to sprinkle a little extra Awesome Dust all over t…
There is a moment in every defensive back’s career, one that brings forward a mix of deep clarity and sheer terror. The other team’s star running back is carrying the ball. He’s running laterally, seeking to reach the edge of all the turmoil involving the two teams’ linemen. If he reaches th…
All great coaches will, from time to time, speak in clichés. They know what works and they want to share it with their players in a manner that is most succinct. It’s something they’ve been doing for years—or even decades—so, until someone invents a new language, they’re probably going to us…
Phillip Steward is chiseled out of stone and is all the more imposing with the polo shirt that he apparently has painted on before each game. The Marana football coach patrols the sidelines from start to finish of the game—exhorting, cheering, teaching—as his surprising Tigers display, week …
Allison Birtcil has the weight of legacy on her shoulders. She and fellow senior, Isabella Lang, both have older sisters who were part of the powerful 2018 Ironwood Ridge High volleyball team that was perhaps the best in Southern Arizona. As often happens with outstanding athletic programs, …
More than halfway into the season, the Arizona Interscholastic Association finally got around to releasing its first round of Power Point rankings.
Sam Hala’ufia is a big guy. His dad was born in Tonga, which is an entire island nation of big guys. Oddly enough, his name is pronounced just like it’s spelled. The first half is Holla (like Gwen Stefani sings in “…Back, Girl.”) Then, it’s ooh-fee-uh. The Mountain View High senior has used …
Among Hanna Hartzell’s duties as a team manager for the undefeated Marana Tigers football team are: Clean the uniforms, get water for the players, supervise pre-game meals, supervise post-game meals, serve as a timer during practice, set up equipment needed for drills, and a bunch of other s…
OK, so the University of Arizona football team is 0-4 and possibly heading for its second straight winless season (that’s actually hard to do). Wildcat basketball is on the horizon, but they have a new, untested coach, some serious NCAA punishment headed its way, and a lineup consisting of …
Ryan Torres can’t believe how quickly it is going. The Flowing Wells senior has only a couple weeks left in his prep career. This weekend will be the Southern Arizona Invitational at Dell Urich and then next weekend is the Flowing Wells Boys Invitational and then that’s that. (Other fall spo…
It has been a long, strange journey for Amphi junior Boe Reh (pronounced Bo Ray), but it’s going quite well right now and should be even greater in years to come. Boe and his family are Karenni, an ethnic group from Burma (now Myanmar) that was the subject of attempted genocide. Many Karenni…
Creedence Clearwater Revival once sang:
For high-school senior athletes, the spring of 2020 was the absolute worst of times. Seasons abruptly canceled, dreams crushed, a permanent cloud of what-might-have-been hanging over their heads for the rest of their lives. They certainly got the worst of it, but for those who followed behin…
The Get Behind Me, COVID prep sports season is about to get underway. Here are just some of the can’t-miss dates that are circled on our calendar.
If T.S. Eliot had been a sports fan, he would have known that August, and not April, is the cruelest month. I mean, seriously, the NBA playoffs (which, quite joyfully, took place in June and July, instead of the usual May and June) are done. Preseason football games are an abomination foiste…
It’s 5:47 a.m. on what will be another blazing-hot summer day, but for some crazy reason there is a flurry of activity on the Amphi High School tennis courts. At the center of it all is a stud athlete who was born in Scotland back when Harry Truman was president of the United States.
After the school sports seasons were shut down in the spring of 2020, crushing the dreams of athletes across the country, there were those who hoped that by that summer, there would be a tiny movement back toward normalcy. But such was not the case. There would be no open gyms, no organized …
When I first started coaching high-school basketball, a well-known coach here in town gave me this advice: Just teach them the game; don’t get to know them. Be there for a couple hours each day, give them your best, then go home and forget about it until the next day.
No one was really sure how it would turn out or even whether there would be an “it.” Every high-school sports year is full of hopes and dreams, but this past sports year was more one of fear and disappointment. In the end, we got through it in pretty decent shape, although, for the schools i…
PHOENIX – Michele McCann says she has “loud mom syndrome.”
PHOENIX — Most youth who have played basketball at the park or in their driveway have likely done this: pretended to hit a high-stakes shot as the buzzer sounds. That could happen more often during Arizona high school basketball games if the state moves forward with a 35-second shot clock.
Around 25 years ago, Isaiah Roebuck’s dad, Sean, was a standout athlete in three sports—football, basketball, and baseball. It was around that time that club teams began emerging from the shadows and specialization in one sport (year-round) began to take hold. Back in the mid-1990s, it wasn’…
Last year at this time, we were fingers-crossed hopeful that the pandemic would flatten out and maybe run its course in (or maybe even because of) the heat of the summer. A lot of us are again hopeful as we head into June. However, it’s not a matter of “fool me once, shame on you; fool me tw…
It seems like forever ago that we entered the start of the 2020-21 school year, hopeful that the pandemic could be kept sufficiently at bay, enough to allow some semblance of normalcy for high school student-athletes, and, at the same time, fearful that an entire year would be lost, one for …
One of the positive things that came out of this pandemic year is that the Arizona Interscholastic Association (AIA) had to ditch its absolutely ridiculous insistence on holding one giant state track meet in the noonday heat in Phoenix in the middle of May. Up until about 10 years ago, there…
Every high school athlete dreams of going to the state tournament at least once in his/her career. In most team sports, it’s a pretty straightforward process. Win enough games so that the convoluted Power Points system can’t mess things up and you’re good. In most individual sports (cross co…
Any local sports fan not in the category of COMPLETELY RABID may not know this, but the University of Arizona is absolutely kickin’ it these days. Oh sure, the football team finished the Pandemic Season in complete shambles; that 70-7 whuppin’ at the hands of Arizona State will be seared int…
The Hollywood version of a prep basketball career starts off with the wide-eyed freshman kid testing the waters, hoping to be a part of something and looking to build toward a glorious future. For Reggie Romo of the Canyon Del Oro Dorados, it was more like “Memento,” a tale told in reverse, …
The old blues song goes: “If it wasn’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have no luck at all…”
In the first round of the Pac-12 Men’s Basketball Tournament, exactly one year ago today, the wildly disappointing Arizona Wildcats had pulled out a wildly disappointing seven-point victory over the last-place Washington Huskies. (The Cats, with their three freshman stars, had been a sexy pi…
TEMPE – Gloves are popping. Bats are cracking. And gates are opening.
PHOENIX – High school athletes will not be required to wear masks during spring sports competition and neither will winter sports athletes during playoffs, the Arizona Interscholastic Association Executive Board voted Tuesday
Nobody should have had to go through what the high-school seniors of the classes of 2020 and 2021 have had to endure. Last year’s seniors were cruising along. The athletes in the class had finished up the winter seasons of basketball or soccer or wrestling. Some of them (and others) were tur…
Four senior student-athletes from Pusch Ridge Christian Academy recently signed letters of intent in early February to continue their athletic and academic futures at several colleges west of the Mississippi River.
It’s 5:20 on a Tuesday afternoon, just 10 minutes before the tipoff of the first game of the year for the Amphi girls basketball team. It’s three months to the day from when official practice for winter sports was original scheduled to begin and more than two months later than when the first…
PHOENIX – Apprehensive Arizona parents of high school athletes can rest easier now.
In the movie “Modern Romance,” writer/director/actor Albert Brooks plays an especially neurotic nebbish who is actually lucky in love, but doesn’t have enough sense to realize it. He over-thinks everything and, in the process, drives away the woman who is perfect for him. In the uncomfortabl…
It was a cold, gray day in March of 1975. The Cochise College baseball team, of which I was a member, headed for Tucson to take on the Pima College Aztecs. (Back in those days, there was a strictly enforced 55 mph speed limit on the Interstate and it took FOREVER to get anywhere for games.) …
After initially canceling the winter sports season last week, the Arizona Interscholastic Association voted 5-4 vote reverse course and reinstate the Arizona high school winter sports season at a special executive board meeting on Tuesday, Jan. 12.
The Arizona Interscholastic Association's executive board voted 5-4 to cancel the upcoming high school winter sports season during a Jan. 7 special session.
Every now and then, Tucson football fans have the melancholy experience of watching a homegrown talent strutting his stuff at a college other than the University of Arizona. We watched Jon Volpe lead Stanford in rushing. We were thrilled watching Riki Gray (Ellison) play linebacker at USC. A…
Government and business leaders in the Town of Marana are concerned about the Pima County Board of Supervisors recent 3-2 vote to implement a mandatory curfew as virus rates rise in Southern Arizona.
We here at The Explorer/Marana News have everything we could ever want or need, so we’re channeling all of our holiday energy into making Christmas wishes for others. Our Christmas wishes are:
While most people, including the sad and unfortunate members of the high-school graduating class of 2021, will look back on this year as the WORST EVER, there were a couple bright spots. With meticulous planning, a strict adherence to protocols, and, certainly, a good measure of luck, Pusch …
The 1979 Amphi High football team went undefeated for the entire season. They needed a stifling 15-0 win over powerhouse Sunnyside to reach the state playoffs and a gutsy goal-line stand in the final two minutes of a 7-0 semifinal win over Apollo to reach the state title game. Amphi cruised …
After Pima County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry asked public schools to stop fall athletic activities, many districts are doing so.
