Looking back, it was a season nobody really expected. The Canyon Del Oro football team was supposed to be pretty good, certainly good enough to make a run at a berth in the Class 4A State playoffs. But then, quite unexpectedly, they started off the season with three straight losses.
Back in the late 1990s, I was coaching girls’ basketball at Amphi High. We were in the midst of a championship season (as it turns out, the only one in that particular sport in the school’s history), and I was feeling pretty good about things. I happened to mention to the athletic director t…
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…
The following travel restrictions and road closures will be in place at 6 a.m. Saturday because of the annual El Tour de Tucson bike race.
Just last week, the Tommy Lloyd Era of University of Arizona men’s basketball began. I was going to go—just as I had gone to Lute Olson’s first home game and Sean Miller’s first game in McKale—but when I saw that the opponent was NAU, I got the equivalent of the journalistic yips. It can’t h…
Trek Bicycle in Oro Valley is hosting the Thanksgiving themed food drive for those with two wheels from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., Sunday Nov. 21. The event is being put on with the support of other local businesses to benefit the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona.
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…
You know how we all tend to think of professional golfers as pampered little babies? They have the best equipment and the top caddies and they stay in the best hotels and, occasionally, they make a nice shot. But the rest of the time, they complain.
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 …
Fifty-three years ago last Saturday, American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos got up on the medal stand at the Mexico City Olympics and did the Black Power salute. It’s legendary now, but back then, it was infamous. Brent Musberger, who would later become a famous announcer for CBS Sp…
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 …
When I was growing up in The Projects in Southern California, living in the other apartment of our duplex was my friend, Bobby Chacon. He and I played multiple sports together, but when he got out of high school, he became a professional boxer. He was also going to college at the time, so th…
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 …
Thanks to University of Arizona golf star David Laskin, every UA student, faculty member and staffer will be able to access the Wall Street Journal for free.
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…
Back when I was coaching girls’ basketball at Green Fields Country Day School (NOT the school that is called Green Fields today), we went down to St. David High in Cochise County for a Saturday afternoon game with our main rivals for the conference championship. When we walked into the gym, …
WASHINGTON – Nine Arizonans are among the more than 500 female athletes who signed on to a brief to the Supreme Court this week challenging Mississippi’s restrictive new abortion law.
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…
Igot an email from a dad of a girl I coached in basketball a few years back. I have to say that he came close to being the perfect sports parent. He would show up to the games, root for his daughter and her teammates, not say anything to or about the refs, and never forget that no matter how…
Creedence Clearwater Revival once sang:
I grew up in Southern California in the late '60s and early '70s. I’ve always considered myself having grown up in poverty, thus learning to appreciate what’s really important in life, and to have attended schools with a very high percentage of minority students, allowing me to grow up witho…
PHOENIX – The surprise announcement of a partnership between the Arizona Bowl and Barstool Sports sheds light on the divisiveness triggered by the media company, but also its increasing attempts to change its image.
Do you think the Wildcats will beat San Diego State this Saturday?
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…
Earlier this year, as long-empty sports stadiums finally started letting fans back in, Mexico was forced to go in the other direction. The national soccer team is known as El Tri (the tricolor of red, white…and green, as Martin Lawrence said in “Blue Streak”). Well, it seems that the many fo…
Because I am cursed with a pretty-good understanding of mathematics, I don’t gamble. I almost never have. I’ll bet on myself to make a free throw or win a tennis match, but gambling in a casino is a sucker’s bet. (Next time you feel like placing a bet in a huge, lavish casino, stop and try t…
PHOENIX – The ACC, Big Ten and Pac-12 conferences announced an official alliance Tuesday – a move that could impact the athletic programs at Arizona State and Arizona as well as the PlayStation Fiesta Bowl.
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.
A Town of Oro Valley lifeguard is building a name for himself in the mixed martial arts community after winning his second professional match in the first minute of the opening round while fighting for an international MMA promotions company.
My friend Rob and I have been doing basketball stuff (camps, leagues, reffing, playing) for more than two decades. He was a stud athlete in high school and played some ball in college. After college, he got into coaching. He and I actually coached against each other twice. My Amphi Freshman …
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…
Fresh back from the 2021 National High School Rodeo championships, Maryn Buchanan is both blazing a personal trail while adding to the well-earned fame of her extended family.
Like many Phoenix fans, I was certain up to the very second that the final horn blew in Milwaukee that the Suns were going to win the first NBA championship in franchise history. Instead, we fans suffered through three straight coulda/shoulda games in which the Suns were down two in the last…
PHOENIX – The Phoenix Suns advanced to the NBA Finals for the first time in 28 years. They revealed the foundation of a championship team, but uncertainty looms as key players are headed to free agency, leaving more questions than answers for the near future.
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 …
Following longtime coach Mike Candrea’s retirement announcement, the University of Arizona announced last month that Caitlin Lowe would become the next coach of the UA softball team.
A year ago at this time, some people were out spreading the virus, but a lot of us were staying close to home, making Netflix ridiculously profitable. (It’s true that Blockbuster Video, at the start of its downward slide, could have bought Netflix for only $50 million.)
Editor’s Note: This story is part of an ongoing project to highlight Black athletes who have broken barriers and made lasting contributions to Arizona sports.
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.
OMAHA, Neb. – Jay Johnson is determined to not let one game define the University of Arizona baseball program.
WASHINGTON – Border officials said they were “devastated” this week to find that the federal government has extended a COVID-19 ban on nonessential border crossings for another month, potentially crippling businesses there.
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey has declared that the pandemic is over. In relative terms, that’s better than some other governors who are now claiming that it never existed. Things are indeed heading in the right direction, but there are people in our society who are dragging their feet, making us …
