Sports

The former head coach and general manager of the four-time Arena Football League-champion San Jose SaberCats, Arbet didn’t promise to break his foot off in his player’s “John Brown hind parts,” as Denzel Washington so eloquently said while playing Boone in the 2000 football flick. But the Seahawks’ heavyweight offseason hire does expect his players to be as close to perfect as possible.

Aptos High senior Matt Perko reaches on a throwing error to Soquel High junior first baseman Ryan Murtha during their Santa Cruz Coast Athletic League baseball game in Aptos. Photo by Bryce Stoepfel

Aptos head coach Randy Blankenship said he’ll try to take “a couple of weeks” off to soak in the Mariners’ historic 2018 season, which featured a win in the Central Coast Section Open Division III championship game and Santa Cruz County’s first California Interscholastic Federation NorCal bowl game berth.

In 20 years, Aptos record-setting running back Marcos Reyes wants people to remember three things about him: (1) he was a nice guy, (2) he was a leader and (3) he treated his guys well.

The Seahawks began the season with a 31-7 thumping of Contra Costa College in non-conference play.

Marcos Reyes rushed for 212 yards and four touchdowns, Hunter Matys ran for a pair of scores and tossed another and the No. 5-seeded Aptos Mariners trounced the top-seeded Palma Chieftains, 49-6, to advance to the Central Coast Section Open Division III championship game.

Abby Pardue has scored in double figures in only two of 18 games this season.

CENTRAL COAST—The Central Coast Section, the local governing body for schools stretching from San Francisco along the coast to King City, this week unveiled its plans for the fall sports season and beyond.  The governing board on Tuesday announced in a press release that mid-December...

Marea Zlatunich could have had a very different high school experience. Now a league, section and state champion runner for the Aptos High Mariners, Zlatunich didn’t show up to the first day of cross country practice during her freshman year. “I honestly didn’t want to do cross country,” Zlatunich said. “I did it as an eighth grader and I wanted to quit after the first day, but my family didn’t let me.” But when her friend, Annika Niles, begged her to come out for the second day of practice because “she didn’t have any friends on the team,” Zlatunich reluctantly obliged. It turned out to be one of the best decisions of her young life.

The Aptos High boys’ basketball team turned on the afterburners before the start of Santa Cruz Coast Athletic League play last season and soared to a share of the league championship.  The Mariners shared the SCCAL title with Santa Cruz High by beating the Cardinals...