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.

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.

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 — 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’…

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…

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…” 

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…

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. 

SAN CLEMENTE, California – High school athletes can’t play competitively this fall semester due to California’s pandemic restrictions, so some elite players are traveling to Arizona and other states to maintain their skills and continue developing a scouting profile for colleges.

The Arizona Interscholastic Association’s executive board voted during a special meeting Thursday to postpone the start of the high school winter sports season until Jan. 5 in response to rising COVID-19 rates across the state.

Newton’s Second Law of Motion states that Force = Mass times Acceleration. When Sean Roebuck was a 150-pound linebacker for the Marana Tigers back in the 1990s, he instinctively understood that principle. “I wasn’t very big,” he explains, “but if I ran at people really fast, I could take the…

PHOENIX – The Arizona Interscholastic Association recommended postponing the start of winter high school sports such as basketball, wrestling and soccer to its executive board Monday, possibly pushing the start of those sports into January.

PHOENIX – After a one-year absence because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Native American Basketball Invitational will return in July, showcasing indigenous basketball players from across the U.S., Canada and New Zealand at venues around the Valley.

PHOENIX – Many high school seniors competing in fall sports have aspirations to play in college. For those in states where sports are on pause because of the COVID-19 pandemic, that goal might be difficult to reach if they don’t already have offers.

A swarm of players wearing color-coded shirts are racing through a series of timed obstacles on a blustery afternoon. The men are asked to perform a series of tasks designed to test different athletic skills. 

For the seventh year in a row, the man they call “Bam” is spending the summer months guiding a mass of young football players through a litany of conditioning drills on the fields of Mountain View High School. 

A swarm of players line up on a parched practice field on a cloudless summer afternoon in the shadows of the imposing rockfaces of the Santa Catalina Mountains. 

Two-dozen players wearing a duke’s mix of practice pennies race around the parched practice field at Ironwood Ridge on a blistering mid-May afternoon. 

A cacophony of whistles screech across the turf football field at Marana High School last Tuesday afternoon as a horde of teenagers’ sprint through drills. 

Cats nearing College World Series

Local athletes from Canyon del Oro and Ironwood Ridge dotted the AIA’s All-Region teams for boys volleyball, with Dorado Jack Call winning Player of the Year in the 5A Kino region. Nighthawk athletes Justin Miller and Jrue Jantz were co-players of the year in the 5A Sonoran region. 

The Oro Valley Wolverines High School lacrosse team capped off a memorable year with a win of Phoenix-based Desert Mountain earlier this month, in the Division II state championship game.