APTOS, CA. - Monday I stepped onto the Aptos High football field for the first time since the late 1980s when Trent Dilfer was the Mariner quarterback.
The last game I covered there was Aptos against North Monterey County. North County was a power then and Aptos came very close to beating the Condors, but a Dilfer pass to a receiver in the end zone that would have won the game fell incomplete.
The field is named now after Dilfer's late son Trevin, who died of heart disease in 2003 at age 5, when the Aptos High grad was playing for the Seattle Seahawks.
It was nice going back to Aptos where I covered the Mariners - and many of the schools in the Monterey Bay - for a decade as sports editor of the Watsonville Register-Pajaronian.
The 1985-'86 Aptos basketball team was the most memorable team I covered in that era, winning the Northern California title at the Oakland Coliseum Arena with a stunning upset of Mt. Eden which entered the game with a 32-0 record.
The Bay Area media referred to the Mariners as the "surfers kids from Santa Cruz" and they looked the part, with an unusual number of tall, angular blond players who could shoot the lights out.
Former coach Bill Warmerdam taught the team to ignore the clock and just play the game. The Mariners didn't do conventional things like holding the ball for the last shot, which rarely works anyway. Instead they'd just play their normal game, make a basket, press and get the ball right back and score again.
Aptos also spent much of its practice time scrimmaging in its free-flow style. The two younger Holt brothers -- Warren and Craig -- were both trained by their dad to do whatever it took to get the ball upcourt and so they were not averse to dribbling the ball between their legs or flinging behind-the-back passes. One of my most vivid memories of the Mt. Eden game was Craig Holt, then a freshman, whipping a perfect behind-the-back pass to a teammate with less than two minutes left of an uber-tense game.
When I asked Warmerdam later why he put a freshman at point guard in such an important game, he said "because he didn't know enough to be scared."
Vintage Warmerdam logic. Ah, those were good times covering sports down Santa Cruz way.
GAME TIME CHANGED: The kickoff for the Central Coast Section Open football title game on Friday night between Serra and Archbishop Mitty at San Jose City College has been changed to 7:30 p.m. The change was made because the game will be televised on Comcast.
Comcast will also televise the North Coast Section Division I title game at 7:30 p.m. at Dublin High Saturday between California and De la Salle.
Guy Haberman, former Cal quarterback Mike Pawlawski and Kate Scott will call the action for both games.
MILESTONE: Serra on Friday night will not only shoot for its first Open title but also for the second 11-victory season in the school history. The Padres won 11 games in 2011 when they captured the CCS DI title. There were no playoffs in 1954 when Serra went 9-0 or when the Padres went a combined 26-3 between 1967 and '69.
VOID: Earl Hansen will be missed as the Palo Alto football coach. As we reported Monday night, Hansen has stepped down as the Viking coach. He led Palo Alto to four section titles, two state playoff bowl games and a huge 15-13 upset of Corona Centennial in 2010 in a state bowl game at the soggy Home Dept Center in Carson. I was in Carson that night covering Centennial for the Riverside Press-Enterprise.
"They were supposed to be unbeatable," Hansen said of Centennial, ranked No. 5 in the nation going in. When I asked him who called the Huskies that, he said "they did."
That doesn't sound like Centennial coach Matt Logan, but it makes for a good story.
