Hurd ran a time of 58.31 in the 400m for 15th place. While she didn’t qualify for the 2025 World Athletics U20 Championships, she did become the third Mastodon to compete at the USATF U20 meet in as many years. Haylee Hile competed in the steeplechase in 2024 and Austin Hall ran the 10,000 meters in 2023.

Hurd (Columbus, Ohio/Columbus Alternative) will be back in the fall for her sophomore season at Purdue Fort Wayne.

 

~ Feel the Rumble ~

Going into this just-completed high school sports year, the 35th consecutive year of covering Orange County high school sports, the thinking was that I had seen everything.

Nope.

The Dana Hills baseball team committed eight errors but still won the game. The unranked Dolphins beat Aliso Niguel — ranked 13th in Orange County — 9-8 in a South Coast League game on April 25. Sophomore Ryan See’s line drive down the left-field line in the bottom of the seventh inning sent home Tommy Moro with the winning run.

That was one highlight from another entertaining high school sports year that ended this month. There was too much good stuff to include it all here. And some not-so-good stuff.

Let’s take a look back and a look ahead to the 2025-26 high school sports year. …

Mater Dei, Edison and Portola won CIF Southern Section football championships. Raul Lara’s first season as Mater Dei head coach also yielded a CIF State championship. …

The upcoming football season brings some new coaches, like Carson Palmer at Santa Margarita. Palmer was a star quarterback for the Eagles before going on to greatness at USC and in the NFL. …

Among many other football coaching changes, Mitch Olson, Kennedy’s football coach for many years, is the head coach now at Fountain Valley; former Irvine coach Erik Terry is at Northwood; and Jason Jellerson replaces the retired Doug Case at Foothill. …

Servite still is figuring out where to play some of its football home games. Some will be at Orange Coast College, some at Santa Ana Stadium – and there is talk of a game or two on campus. …

Richard Shearer retired after six years as CIF-SS assistant commissioner in charge of football, baseball and other sports. It’s a big job. …

Releaguing completed for the 2026-27 and 2027-28 school years for non-football sports moved Laguna Beach to a north county conference and expanded the Trinity League to a Trinity Conference that brings in Crean Lutheran, Pacifica Christian, Sage Hill and St. Margaret’s and returns Rosary to the Trinity group. …

Mater Dei won a second straight CIF-SS Division 1 girls volleyball championship. …

Katy Daly resigned as girls volleyball coach at Santa Margarita after a successful run there. …

The fastest-growling sport is girls flag football. The CIF Southern Section had its first CIF-SS championships. Orange County’s Northwood, Orange Lutheran and Troy won CIF-SS titles. …

In boys water polo, Newport Harbor beat JSerra 11-10 in the CIF-SS Open Division final. JSerra beat Newport Harbor in the CIF Southern California Regional Division I final 11-9 for Newport Harbor’s only loss. …

Mega-successful girls basketball coach Kevin Kiernan is returning to Troy to coach there in 2025-26 after 17 seasons at Mater Dei. His 900 career wins is the most in California girls basketball history. …

Trabuco Hills senior Holly Barker won the CIF-SS Division 1 girls cross country championship. Dana Hills senior Evan Noonan won a third consecutive CIF State boys cross country championship. Noonan is one of the all-time greats in O.C. cross country. …

Fairmont Prep, Los Alamitos and Santiago won CIF-SS boys basketball championships. …

Canyon senior Brandon Benjamin was Orange County boys basketball player of the year. He was county player of the year as a sophomore at Canyon, spent his junior season at Mater Dei and returned to Canyon. …

Mater Dei junior Luke Barnett scored 55 points in a game to break the school boys basketball single-game record of 53 points set by Tom Lewis in 1983. …

Nate Klitzing left Crean Lutheran after the 2024-25 season to become boys basketball coach at Orange Lutheran, his alma mater. Austin Loeb was promoted from assistant coach to head coach at Crean. …

Ringo Bossenmeyer resigned as Tustin boys basketball coach after 25 years at that post. He was known for getting the most out of his roster. Jonathan Antolin, an assistant at Foothill, replaces him. …

Matt Kanne replaced Tony Davis as basketball coach at Servite. …

Richard Smith retired as athletic director at Los Alamitos. Long ago Smith was a county basketball coach of the year at Servite. Nathan Berger, this past season’s county boy basketball coach of the year, assumes the A.D. duties and remains Griffins’ basketball coach. …

Jon Hamro retired as athletic director at San Clemente. He is replaced by former Tesoro football head coach Matt Poston, who also will be a Tritons football assistant coach. …

Trinity League boys basketball teams will play each other one time in league play next season and finish the regular season with a league tournament, like they’ve done in the Pacific Coast League. …

Esperanza freshman Sammy Sanchez won everything that could be won in wrestling, including CIF section and state championships. Marina freshman Aubree Gutierrez and Esperanza junior Olivia Davis won CIF State girls wrestling championships. …

Alan Clinton resigned as Servite wrestling coach, but he will continue to be involved as a consultant/assistant coach. …

JSerra boys soccer won CIF-SS and CIF SoCal Regional titles, and was named national champion. …

Beckman won a national cheer championship. …

Anaheim, El Dorado and Laguna Beach were CIF-SS girls water polo champs. …

The Newport Elks baseball tournament is no more. It was a great season-opening tournament. …

Estancia was Orange County’s only CIF-SS baseball champion, winning the Division 6 title. Sometimes it’s difficult to know how good a middle- or lower-division player is until that player is in an all-star game. Estancia catcher Sawyer Atkinson, the CIF-SS Division 6 player of the year, proved in the county all-star game that he was a Division 1-type of player. …

The Santa Ana Unified School District removed David Casper as Segerstrom principal and Erasmo Ramirez as the school’s varsity baseball coach after the CIF Southern Section found that the school’s baseball program violated CIF rules. …

Servite’s group of freshmen and sophomore sprinters set Orange County records in the 4×100, 4×200 and 4×400 relays. No California team has gone under 40 seconds in the 4×100 – until next year. …

Santa Margarita senior swimmer Teagan O’Dell was the county girls athlete of the year for the second year in a row. Future Olympian. …

The very-early Orange County football preseason Top 10: 1. Mater Dei; 2. Santa Margarita; 3. Mission Viejo; 4. Orange Lutheran; 5. Servite; 6. San Juan Hills; 7. JSerra; 8. Edison; 9. Crean Lutheran; 10. Tustin. …

The even-earlier Orange County boys basketball preseason Top 10: 1. Mater Dei; 2. Santa Margarita; 3. JSerra; 4. Fairmont Prep; 5. Orange Lutheran; 6. Crean Lutheran; 7. Pacifica Christian; 8. Los Alamitos; 9. La Habra; 10. Corona del Mar.

Getting older means the list of departed friends annually gets too many new additions. Difficult good byes to John Dahlem, CIF historian and former president of the CIF-SS Council and the greatest adventurer one could know; Jerry DeBusk, such a great basketball coach at Newport Harbor and Santa Margarita; Fran Ursini, football ref and supporter of high school athletics in every way possible; Villa Park boys basketball coach Kevin Reynolds, smart coach and a kind, funny man; and Ed Arnold, TV sportscaster who did so much for Special Olympians of high school age and other age groups. …

I need and accept all the help I can get. Thank you to my Register teammates: Dan Albano, David Delgado, Martin Henderson, Michael Huntley, Dan Nilsen, Brian Patterson and Lou Ponsi. Thanks also to a bunch of people who give me great information and ideas including the people at CalHiSports, Thom Simmons at the CIF Southern Section office, Ed Duffy, Rich Gonzalez at PrepCalTrack and Dick Sands. …

Special thanks to all of the athletic directors, coaches and the sensational athletes. All of you people are the greatest.

As the back end of the college football season keeps expanding for upper-echelon teams, a proposal is now on the table to turn the early Week 0 window for select games into the new start to the season.

By moving the season up one week for all teams, not just those who obtain a waiver for an early start, the college football season would gain a 12th week as soon as 2026. It would also give teams an option for an additional bye week during the season.

All of the discussion about when to start the season comes as changes to the College Football Playoff format have been tabled for now. After moving to a 12-team playoff last season, the postseason could expand to as many as 16 teams with five automatic qualifiers and 11 at-large teams.

The proposed changes to the front and back ends of the schedule have come at the current gathering of Division I conference commissioners this week at Asheville, N.C.

“My view is we should have a consistent start date,” SEC commissioner Greg Sankey told Yahoo Sports. “The adage is teams make their most substantial improvement between games one and two. I think we should have a consistent start date. Labor Day weekend has been a good start date for college football.”

The new start date proposal would move Labor Day weekend to the second week of the season.

There are four games scheduled for Week 0 this season (Aug. 23): Kansas State and Iowa State will meet in Dublin, Ireland, while Fresno State is at Kansas, Sam Houston is at Western Kentucky and Stanford will play at Hawaii.

–Field Level Media