Isaiah Salinda, a 2015 Junipero Serra graduate, is still setting records on the golf course

Serra posted a picture of Salinda holding his scorecard, along with a close-up picture of the scorecard itself, on Twitter last week.

Salinda played a bogey-free round, with 11 birdies and seven pars. On the front nine, he went out with a 31, with five birdies and four pars over his first nine holes.

Coming in, he was even better, with six birdies and just three pars as he shot a 29 over the final nine holes.

Twice he bagged four birdies in a row during the round — shooting one under par on holes 7, 8, 9 and 10. After a par on 11, he reeled off four more birdies in a row on 12, 13, 14 and 15.

Setting records is nothing new for Salinda. During the summer of his senior year at Stanford in 2018, he won the Pacific Coast Amateur in large part because of his 9-under 62 during the third round of the tournament at San Francisco’s Olympic Club. His 10 birdies and 9-under score set the Lake Course record.

In his only tournament thus far in the 2021 golf season — yes, the new golf year has already started — Salinda finished in a tie for 56th at the Safeway Open at Silverado in Napa Sept. 10-13.

***

If it’s not the pandemic shutting down high school sports, it’s the smoke from the wildfires. For the third time in as many weeks, Serra athletics said on its Twitter account it was suspending conditioning drills because of the smoky conditions.

Aragon athletic director Steve Sell said the San Mateo Union High School District’s protocols state once the air quality index exceeds 150, all outdoor activities are shut down.

This would be the fourth year in a row high school athletics have been affected by poor air quality — but this is certainly the earliest we’ve had these challenges on the Peninsula. In 2017, 2018 and 2019, the poor air quality affected the Central Coast Section playoffs in early November. With the fire season apparently starting earlier and earlier, postponements of education-based athletics may become more and more common.

A “new normal,” if you will.

***

I’m aware the San Jose Earthquakes don’t get a lot of run in the pages of the Daily Journal. But I do keep track of what’s going on with the Bay Area’s biggest and best-known professional soccer teams and it’s definitely been a Jekyll-and-Hyde season for the Quakes.

The team seems to have righted the ship after a rocky couple weeks as they suffered losses of 7-1 (Seattle), 6-1 (Portland) and 5-0 (Colorado) last week.

Last Sunday, however, the Quakes notched their first win in 10 games, beating LAFC 2-1.

San Jose got off to a rocky start to the season, getting hammered 5-2 by Minnesota in the days before the league was shut down by the coronavirus pandemic. When Major League Soccer returned to play, it restarted the season with a World Cup-style tournament, the Earthquakes looked like a different team, winning their pool and advancing to the quarterfinals.

It was Minnesota United that sent them back into a tailspin, however. United trounced San Jose 4-1 to eliminate the Earthquakes from the tournament and the Quakes seemed to carry that back into the regular season. They suffered a last-minute defeat at the hands of the LA Galaxy, followed by a 5-1 thrashing by LAFC. They followed that with three ties in their next four games and had lost two straight before beating LAFC last Sunday.

San Jose will get another shot at the LA Galaxy Saturday night as they enter the final month of the regular season, sitting in last place in the Western Conference with a record of 3-5-6 (MLS uses the win-draw-loss method of showing records), with just 14 points and a minus-20 goal differential.

Nathan Mollat can be reached by email: nathan@smdailyjournal.com or by phone: 344-5200 ext. 117.