The San Mateo girls’ soccer team had not been pushed often this season as their 8-1-1 record attests.

It’s only the second week of Coast North women’s basketball play but the winner of Wednesday’s 5 p.m. College of San Mateo at Skyline game will have sole leadership of the conference with a 3-0 record. They were the only teams to survive, unbeaten, the delayed opening week of competition — b…

MONDAY

Makena Nitao is confident in all phases of her hoops game — except free throw shooting.

Brady Carson, Hillsdale boys’ basketball. A junior shooting guard, Brady lit it up last week. He opened the week with 12 points in a 48-20 win over Mills. Friday against rival Aragon, Carson poured in 23 points, draining seven 3-pointers along the way, in a 51-46 victory.

It was setting up to be the perfect farewell to 49ers quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo. All his failings were on full view in the NFC divisional playoff game Saturday. The inability to get anything going offensively for much of the game. Another brutal drive-killing interception. Leading an offen…

The PAL North was Half Moon Bay’s to lose.

There was plenty of cheering coming from the Serra postgame locker room Saturday night.

If there is a measuring stick by which Peninsula Athletic League teams can measure themselves, it is the Aragon girls’ basketball team.

THURSDAY

The COVID-delayed Coast North women’s basketball season finally got underway Wednesday — and the leaders rest solidly in San Mateo County.

Everyone pointed to Sergio Beltran.

When the Woodside girls’ soccer team traveled to Burlingame Thursday afternoon for an early-season Peninsula Athletic League Bay Division showdown, the teams were a combined 17-1.

WEDNESDAY

Natalie Sullivan Wu has always been a goal scorer. Joining the Burlingame girls’ water polo team as a freshman, Sullivan Wu poured in more than 90 goals.

Friday night was a good night for the Carson family. Youngest child Lexi tipped off the evening with her Hillsdale junior varsity game at San Mateo. The family then hustled over to Hillsdale to watch middle child Brady and the Hillsdale boys host San Mateo. That still left them all enough ti…

It all starts with defense for the Gryphons.

The Bay Division is absolutely stacked.

TUESDAY

Cross-country running, somewhat by definition, is about harrowing journeys. Woodside senior Elle Marsyla has seen her share of harrowing races — for worse or for better — but none of those individual events were as distressing as the journey of her overall cross-country career.

Don’t look now, but the Burlingame girls’ soccer team is on a roll.

When Griff Price joined the Sacred Heart Prep boys’ water polo team as a freshman, he was already in the discussion as one of the best goalkeepers in the country.

Luke Bottari is a Utah Ute.

South City has certainly put itself on the girls’ soccer map in recent years. The Warriors have reached the Central Coast Section championship stage in each of the past two seasons, including the program’s first-ever section title in the 2020-21 CCS Division IV tournament.

Like nearly every other team in the Peninsula Athletic League, the Hillsdale boys’ basketball team has not been immune to the effects of COVID.

THURSDAY

The first time Aidan Dimick ran the Crystal Springs Cross Country Course, he was racing his older brother Ryan.

The West Bay Athletic League Foothill Division girls’ soccer title has gone through Menlo School for the last half decade.

Mike Reynoso has certainly had his ups and downs.

WEDNESDAY

If you play golf, you know it can be a humbling game. San Mateo senior Lindsey Huang learned that the hard way. At the Central Coast Section tournament at Rancho Seco in Monterey in November, Huang had about a 10 foot putt for birdie on the 18th hole. All she had to do was two-putt for par a…

We’re not even two full weeks into the new year and we already have our first bizarre sports story of 2022 — namely, the Novak Djokovic-Australian Open drama. Even my wife, who is the most casual of sports fans, has a vague idea of what is going on with this story.

With the first week of the season delayed for COVID and the virus running through nearly every basketball team in the Peninsula Athletic League, expectations need to be tempered.

The Serra Padres have hit their first rough patch of the season.

TUESDAY

Like many highly-ranked junior players, Menlo-Atherton’s Ava Martin did not appear in all of the Bears’ Peninsula Athletic League matches, instead focusing on the big, important ones.

Half Moon Bay hit the ground running in Tuesday’s Peninsula Athletic League girls’ basketball opener.

When last we left our heroines of the Sequoia girls’ soccer team, they were playing for the Central Coast Section Division II title in the truncated 2020-21 spring season.

TUESDAY

Hillsdale seniors Jessica Dean and Victoria Vanos were the best volleyball show in the county this season.

A local guy comes home. Well, as close to home as he can get and still play basketball. Frankie Ferrari, a 2014 graduate of Burlingame, was added to the Santa Cruz Warriors roster over the weekend.

Insofar as 0-0 ties go, Aragon and Sacred Heart Prep locked up for a good one.

Aragon boys’ soccer coach Joe Rousseau was looking to get his Dons one last tune-up before they open Peninsula Athletic League play against Burlingame and Menlo-Atherton next week.

SAN FRANCISCO — Serra’s West Catholic Athletic League slate opened with a warm chorus of boos from the St. Ignatius fans at McCullough Gymnasium.

The “Battle of Belmont,” soccer style, was one of the most anticipated meetings of the non-league season for many years. Not only was the Carlmont-Notre Dame-Belmont matchup for Belmont bragging rights, it also featured two of the best teams in the Central Coast Section.

If there was anyone looking forward to the new year, it was the Sacred Heart Prep boys’ soccer team.

So it begins ... again. But if there is anything high school sports administrators have learned over the last 22 months is how to adjust on the fly. As the omicron variant surges, athletic directors, coaches, players and their families have again found themselves sticking and moving, bobbing…

Soccer coaches always face a conundrum when it comes to the winter break. Do you try to corral the team for practices over the two-week vacation, or do you just bag it altogether and reconvene after the holidays?

It was a battle of styles in Tuesday’s non-league boys’ soccer matchup between Sequoia and Carlmont.

Talk about a turnaround.