Category: Sports

by Ernie McCray

My heart continues
to bleed miserably
for the incredibly hapless residents
of Los Angeles
and I, particularly,
can’t imagine
how hard it must be
for the LA football teams,
the Chargers
and the Rams,
that had to board planes
to make it to NFL Playoff Games
while their beautiful city was aflame
due to a firestorm of a magnitude|
that’s almost impossible
for one to make sense of in his brain,

By Jake Howard / Surfer / January 11, 2025

One of the greatest surf lives ever lived, the legendary Mike Hynson has gracefully kicked out at the age of 82. Born in Crecent City, California, on June 28, 1942, Hynson will forever be tied to the breakout success of “The Endless Summer,” but the hit surf film hardly defined the man. A local hero, a hot-dog performer, a shaping genius, a cosmic adventurer, Hynson altered the sport and culture of surfing in an untold number of ways over his colorful time on this spinning blue orb.

The son of a Navy man, Hynson grew up ping-ponging between Hawaii and California before his family finally settled in Pacific Beach in the mid 1950s. And that’s when and where his life as a surfer began. Indoctrinated into the rebellious surf scene of San Diego in the late ’50s and early ‘60s, his early work with Gordon & Smith and the Red Fin design carved out a name for him as a top-flight board builder, while his antics with the Windansea Surf Club became the stuff of legend. Landing back in Hawaii in 1961, he was among the first class of surfers to begin to crack the code at Pipeline.

The Point Loma High School PA Baseball Booster is collecting Christmas trees to fundraise for the high school’s baseball program. Each $30 donation goes straight to the program to benefit the players.

If you are interested in having the players pick up your tree, please Venmo $30 to @PLHS-BaseballBooster or leave a check for $30 written to the PLHS-PA Baseball with your tree.

By Jim Kempton / Surfer.com / December 31, 2024

Wading into the Pacific Ocean on a clear cold New Year’s Eve in 1926, Faye Baird was more than a little nervous. For starters, she was carrying a ten-foot, 110-pound redwood surfboard on her back as she entered the shoreline. There was no wetsuit to seal out the 59-degree temperature on both land and sea—only a scratchy wool bathing suit. The winter sky had darkened early and was now turning a shade of blue-black.

Joining her—and already neck deep in the surf—was her partner Charlie Wright, a lifeguard from Ocean Beach just a few miles south. He was carrying two lit waterproof flares above his head, trying to get as far past the shorebreak as possible to prevent the torches from getting soaked before they reached the outside lineup. In the moonlight, Faye could see head-high waves rolling through on her right. But what gave her the most pause were the hundreds of people packing the Promenade, crowding the dunes. Hundreds more were following her to the water’s edge.

By Dani Miskell / 10News / Dec. 28, 2024

A local martial artist is set to receive three World Championship Titles in Sport Karate after competing in tournaments across the country in 2024.

At her last competition of the year in Toronto, Abigail Hunck,13, and her father, Michael, tallied all her points from the 12 competitions together, and the total number determined she met the threshold to win three World Championship Titles for the three divisions she competed in.

By Chas Smith / Beach Grit / December 30, 2024

Pier pressure to become a thing of the past?

Everyone knows, I think, that California’s coolest surfers generally congregate around the Golden State’s many piers. Bobbing below the fisherpeople in Pismo, shooting the pilings in Huntington, getting all rad in Ocean Beach etc. Pier Rats, as they are reverentially called, thrive off the high stakes of visibility. One thing to bog a top turn whilst out at a local beachbreak. Quite another thing to do whilst under the discerning eyes of tens, if not hundreds, of inland tourists.

By Noah Perkins /Pt Loma-OB Monthly San Diego Union-Tribune / December 11, 2024

It was a very good year for the Point Loma High School girls cross country team.

The Pointers’ second-place standing at the CIF Division III State Championships in Fresno on Nov. 30 was good for the best finish in school history.

“The team went into it very confident, but not overly confident,” head coach Keith DeLong said. “I was ecstatic with the finish. They were thrilled. Getting there and placing was a huge thing for us.”

Former San Diego City Manager Jack McGrory Testified He Informed Gloria of “Great Deal for Taxpayers”

By Arturo Castanares – Editor-at-Large / La Prensa / Nov. 29, 2024

A statewide university official testified under oath that he briefed San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria twice in 2022 on details of an offer for a free-to-taxpayers sports arena but the Mayor instead kept moving forward on selecting a private developer who had donated more than $100,000 to his election campaign.

Jack McGrory, a member of the 25-person California State University Board of Trustees and former City Manager for the City of San Diego, is the first official to detail a 2021 proposal received from Denver-based Oak View Group (OVG) to fund and build a new sports arena within the SDSU’s Mission Valley campus.

By Ella Boyd / The Inertia / November 25, 2024

When San Clemente’s Measure BB failed to pass by less than 3 percent of the vote, I began to wonder: what are the pros and cons of sand replenishment on surfing?

Measure BB was a ballot initiative that proposed a half-cent sales tax increase to fund sand replenishment for various beaches, battle coastline erosion, and maintain the Beach Trail and pier. Since research points to almost 70 percent of California’s beaches disappearing by 2100, surely there must be reasons people oppose sand replenishment besides the minute change to their sales tax.

To seek answers, I reached out to San Diego Surfrider Executive Committee member Tom Cook. Tom is a researcher with an MS in Physical Oceanography with over 20 years of experience in coastal ocean current and wave observations. He’s been involved with Surfrider since the late 1990s, starting with revitalizing the South Florida (now Miami) chapter to address beach litter and coastal erosion. After moving to San Diego in the mid-2000s, he co-chaired the Beach Preservation Committee and led efforts like Surf Spot monitoring during SANDAG’s 2012 Regional Beach Sand Project II.

My first question for Cook was simply: what are the pros and cons of sand replenishment as it pertains to surfers? Without beating around the bush, Cook said, “traditional coastal management practices are rarely aligned with surfing interests.”

By JW August

Fore!! The city of San Diego has received a lot of unwanted attention in recent years for some of its questionable real estate deals, but when it comes to its three municipal golf courses, it has a lot to crow about, based on a newly released revenue report.

The three courses — Balboa, Torrey Pines and Mission Bay — generated $40 million in sales, and after costs, cleared a $14 million profit for the 2024 fiscal year ending June 30, thanks to a record-breaking 420,000 rounds of golf played. Torrey Pines North  the most–94,000 rounds.That’s according to a report presented by the city’s golf division to the San Diego City Council’s Environment Committee.

By Nicklas Balboa/ The Inertia / October 31, 2024 

After living in San Francisco for years, I finally made the commitment to the SOCAL life and moved to San Diego. I bounced around for a few months, and fell in love with Ocean Beach. Something about the graffitied walls, the painted murals, the hippie-esque culture, the homelessness, and the cold surf made me feel at home. But in my heart, there was only one OB.

Growing up in the Bay Area, I always thought that the title OB belonged to San Francisco’s fabled Ocean Beach… but after moving to Ocean Beach in San Diego, I was confused when I saw the OB stickers on every car in town.

After asking friends from home in SF, and local buddies in San Diego, it appeared that everyone was in agreement that their neighborhood was (un)officially called OB. And people less in the know from either pole of the state were unaware that the other side had an Ocean Beach to represent.