Half Moon Bay loves its high school’s sports

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Half Moon Bay High School has, arguably, the most dedicated fans in the Peninsula Athletic League. Granted, Tuesday’s game, a 3-0 Cougars’ win, was a bit of anomaly — it was the baseball team’s first-ever appearance in the Nor Cal tournament — so I take that into account when talking about the crowd.

But to say Tuesday’s game was standing-room only would not do the scene justice. The limited seating in the stands, which is for a few hundred, were nearly full 10 minutes before first pitch and fans had already started to line the first-base dugout side. There’s no seating, but you get an unobstructed standing view.

It was the same story in viewing area behind home plate, with people already standing two and three deep.

Both those spots are my usually perches for taking pictures, so I made the executive decision to just shoot from the Half Moon Bay dugout, which gave me an even better perspective on scene.

While credit certainly goes out to the Sonoma Valley fans who made the trip, this was a decidedly Cougars crowd because Sonoma fans would not know how to access the hills beyond the outfield fence. But about a thousand yards out, you could make out a group of four or five people “watching” the game.

There is an out building behind the left-field fence, and next to that, a shipping storage container, on which a handful of kids scrambled up and were sitting on the roof to watch the game. That was after they had been shooed off the top of the foul-line fence along the left-field line.

The outfield had its own version of a “knothole gang” as a number of fans were watching through the holes cut out of the windscreen covering the chainlink fence.

Remember that set of stairs I referred to earlier? Well, there is another way down to the field — a winding wheelchair ramp. Because it is elevated, it made for a good spot to watch and a patch of concrete wall to sit on.

There were several other Half Moon Bay administrators and others watching the game from the Cougars’ dugout area — including 2022 graduate Jared Mettam, the Daily Journal Baseball Player of the Year who just wrapped up his senior season at Saint Mary’s College by eliminating top-ranked UCLA from the Western Region tournament of the College World Series. He told someone he had never seen this many people at a Half Moon Bay baseball game before.

There were a lot of people in that dugout who noticed the same thing.

The crowd support was, “Unbelievable,” Half Moon Bay manager Brian Anderson said after the game, adding that the team was treated to a BBQ dinner Monday night by the team parents.

It’s a new phenomenon for baseball, but it is just the latest sport at the coastside high school to enter rarified air. Football is, and always will be, No. 1 in Half Moon Bay and fans turn out in droves for those games — home and away. When the Cougars were winning PAL division, Central Coast Section and Nor Cal championships, the stands were packed.

Then came the rise of the boys’ and girls’ basketball teams. Division and CCS titles and deep Nor Cal runs began to pile up and the stands were packed.

“It’s amazing getting it for baseball,” Anderson said. “[Baseball] is kind of like the third sport. It’s just awesome people are paying attention to these guys.”

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A couple of local community college titans will be honored this weekend, Saturday, June 6.

At 9 a.m., longtime track and field throws coach, Mike Lewis, will be honored with a plaque for his dedication to coaching shot put, discus and javelin. He joined the CSM staff in 1988 after a stint at Skyline College. As a high school student in San Francisco, Lewis set a national high school discus record.

The ceremony will take place at the CSM throws facility, which is located at the top of the football field stands.

At 11 a.m. at the San Mateo Elks Lodge, there will be a celebration of life for longtime CSM cross country and track coach, Bob Rush, who passed away in March.

In addition to his long coaching career, Rush is credited with helping build, and then maintain for decades, the Crystal Springs Cross Country Course in Belmont, which sits at the Interstate 280/State Route 92 interchange.

If anyone is interested in attending the Rush memorial, please email rjr68@yahoo.com so the organizers can get some kind of an idea of a head count for catering.

Nathan Mollat has been covering high school sports in San Mateo County for the San Mateo Daily Journal since 2001. He can be reached by email: nathan@smdailyjournal.com.