Sports

The Mariners were also hoping the Toreadores would take their foot off the pedal a bit after. That wasn’t the case either.

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...

Alex Austen, a senior offensive lineman for the Aptos High football team, stands at a towering 6-foot-5-inches and 311 pounds. Standing next to his fellow lineman, the starting left tackle makes them all look like members of the freshman squad. Six-foot-2, 283-pound senior tackle Joseph Gutierrez-Lee might as well be 5-foot-7 and 150 pounds.

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.

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 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.

Capitola-Soquel All-Star pitcher Dylan Hull recorded a complete game shutout on Saturday in a 7-0 win against the Aptos Little League All-Stars in the District 39 11s championship at Franich Park.

Aptos High dedicated its baseball diamond to brothers Paul and Robert Bailey on Tuesday before the Mariners’ Santa Cruz Coast Athletic League game against Soquel High.

SALINAS—As the gusty Salinas Valley winds began to pick up, so did the howls from Lobos fans sitting in the stands, cheering for their Monterey Peninsula College football team as it got into victory formation to close out the season.  The Lobos defeated Cabrillo College,...

APTOS—Natalia Ackerman knows what it’s like to hoist a Santa Cruz Coast Athletic League and Central Coast Section Division III basketball title in a single season.  But that was so last season. The 6-foot-1 Aptos High senior forward has her eyes set on something bigger for...