Lady Panthers are better than record suggests

Not only did the Panthers qualify as the seventh place-team out of the Peninsula Athletic League’s Bay Division, they did so as the third seed in the bracket, which means they are the 43rd-ranked team out of 48 teams that qualified for CCS — eight schools in six brackets.

And yet in their first-round game against No. 6 Monte Vista Christian Saturday, the Panthers erupted for a season-high runs scored in a 13-6 win over the Mustangs.

Burlingame’s success shows just how strong the Bay Division is. Despite winning just four games in 14 Bay Division matchups, a more in-depth look shows they were this close to a much better record. The Panthers suffered three losses in division play by one run and were 0-5 overall in one-run games. But eight of the 10 teams they faced this year made the CCS playoffs. Even though the Panthers lost a majority of those games, they were still earning power points toward the playoffs and when the math was done, Burlingame qualified for the postseason.

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The eight San Mateo County baseball and softball teams that advanced to the CCS semifinals this week, games are scattered across the section and all throughout the week.

Here is a rundown of semifinal games:

Baseball

Tuesday 

Division V: No. 2 Capuchino (18-9) vs No. 3 King’s Academy (11-14-1), 4 p.m. Mission College

No. 8 Hillsdale (17-9) vs No. 4 Monte Vista Christian (22-5), 4 p.m. Hartnell College

Division IV: No. 6 Woodside Priory (16-1) vs No. 2 Alisal (15-10), 4 p.m. Sollectito Ballpark-Monterey

Wednesday 

Division II: No. 6 Serra (17-7) vs No. 2 Bellarmine (18-12-1), 4 p.m. at Mission College

Thursday

Division III: No. 4 Sacred Heart Prep (20-7-1) v No. 1 Branham (21-7), 3 p.m. at Mission College

Softball

Tuesday

No. 3 Burlingame (8-12-1) vs No. 2 North Salinas (11-12), 4 p.m. Salinas Sports Complex

Wednesday

No. 4 Notre Dame-Belmont (13-10) vs No. 1 Leland (11-12), 7 p.m. Los Gatos High School

Thursday

Division I: No. 5 Carlmont (16-8) vs No. 1 Notre Dame-Salinas (18-7), 4 p.m. at Saratoga High School

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I usually don’t reference out-of-county kids in this space, but Ellie McCuskey-Hay’s performance at the CCS track and field championships deserves some attention because she is most certainly the next CCS star.

A San Rafael resident who attends St. Ignatius in San Francisco, McCuskey-Hay won four CCS titles Saturday at Gilroy — the 100, 200 and long jump, along with running the anchor leg on the Wildcats’ 4x100 relay teams.

McCuskey-Hay is a freshman.

She won the 100 with a time of 11.92, beating the runner-up by more than two-tenths of a second, 12.18. In the 200, she ran a 24.76, just holding off Mountain View’s Hannah Rutherford, who posted a 24.87. They were the only two to post sub-25 times.

In the long jump, McCuskey-Hay held off Aragon’s Pia Cho, with McCuskey-Hay posting a mark of 18-9.50 to tie her personal record and just ahead of Cho’s 18-4.

McCuskey-Hay then anchored the 4x100 squad to a 48.18.

All those victories qualified McCuskey-Hay for the state meet in each event. Her best chance of making the state final comes in the long jump, where she posted the eighth-best leap.

In the 100 and 200, she is just outside the top-10 qualifiers — she has the 12th-fastest time in the 100 and the 14th-best time in the 200. Only the top nine make it to the finals.

But again, she is a freshman. Imagine what she’ll be doing by the time she’s a senior, given good health.

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It’s hard to believe there was ever a time that Nike wasn’t the center of the basketball universe. The Air and Jordan brands have become must-have shoes in the world of sneakerheads.

But there was a time Nike was a distant third among basketball shoe manufactures and that story was recently brought to the big screen in the Ben Affleck-Matt Damon vehicle, “Air,” which recounts the story of Sonny Vaccaro’s pursuit of Michael Jordan to wear Nike.

The movie is brilliant. If you’re a sports fan, a shoe fan, a Damon fan, this movie is for you. The soundtrack is a killer mashup of 1980s hits and Damon gets his “A Few Good Men” speech as the crowning scene of the movie.

Viola Davis as Jordan’s mother was perfect and she and Damon should be up for awards. Chris Tucker, who starred in a number of hit movies in the late 1990s and early 2000s before taking a long hiatus from Hollywood, returns and is strong, as is Jason Bateman. Surprisingly, the weakest link was Affleck as Nike founder Phil Knight, but his character is not really a main focus of the movie.

But this is not a story told from Jordan’s angle. In fact, you never even see the actor’s face who plays Jordan. This movie is about the gamble Nike made that has since paid off even more than Nike executives could have possibly dreamed.

I highly recommend “Air,” and if you have an Amazon Prime account, the movie is “free” on Prime Video.

Nathan Mollat can be reached by email: nathan@smdailyjournal.com or by phone: 344-5200 ext. 117. To report scores or tips, email sports@smdailyjournal.com.