The Bearcats have all-star coaching staff

Carion said it took him half a second to bring Forslund aboard.

He must be making an impact as San Mateo has opened the season 3-0 and has scored more than 50 points in all three wins.

Forslund has been one of the best coaches, whether as the head man or assistant, in the Central Coast Section for more than decades. He said at this point, he is content to serve in assistant roles where all he has to do is coach and not worry about the rest of responsibilities a head coach assumes with the job, a lot of which is off-the-court management.

And Forslund could not have come into a better situation. Carion has established himself as an elite head coach, leading the South City girls to the 2018 CCS title and reviving, for a year, a moribund Jefferson program. After taking over the Bearcats program, he has led them to one of the quickest turnarounds in recent San Mateo County history. In his first season, he his team snapped a 51-game losing streak in PAL division play. That same 2023-24 season, he guided the Bearcats to the undefeated Lake Division crown. They were promoted to the Ocean Division for 2024-25 and San Mateo ran its PAL division winning streak to 20 in a row with a 12-0 record and the Ocean championship.

That earned the Bearcats a promotion to the Bay Division for the 2025-26 campaign. From Lake to Bay in three years? It simply doesn’t happen.

And if Carion and Forslund were the whole of the San Mateo coaching staff, that in and of itself would be impressive.

But there’s more. Joe Dito, who spent seven seasons as the Burlingame girls’ varsity head coach, enters his third season with Carion and the Bearcats. And then there is Nancy Dinges, who while officially a coach in the program, serves in more of a consultant role with both the varsity and JV teams.

Dinges is a member of the San Mateo County Athletic Hall of Fame after a record-setting career at Hillsdale before starring for University of Pacific. She also served as the Bearcats’ head coach from 2008 to 2017.

And let’s not leave out JV head coach Earl Grogan, who has been a fixture in high school coaching and officiating circles for as long as I’ve been working on the Peninsula.

Combined, the San Mateo girls’ basketball coaching staff has got to have close to a century’s worth of coaching experience. Sure, the “old” jokes will fly around, but that is a really impressive coaching staff that any high school athletic director would love to have on their basketball sideline. Hopefully the players on the team appreciate what they have and, to be honest, the proof has been in the pudding the last two-plus years.

***

Sunday is a day of celebration for NorCal Crew, the Redwood City-based rowing club, as it announces the college destinations of its athletes, celebrates an amazing 2025 season and finishes off with the club’s “ergothon” fundraiser, all at Redwood City’s Courthouse Square beginning at 11 a.m.

NorCal is sending its athletes to some of the most prestigious rowing colleges and universities in the country, including the likes of UCLA, USC, Harvard and Yale.

“Their commitments to universities (like these), reflect not only their talent, but also the strength of the (NorCal) program and the support they receive from our community,” NorCal Crew executive director Beth Anderson said in a press release.

The club had three top-five finishes at the prestigious Head of the Charles Regatta in Massachusetts, as well as a representative in the U19 World Championships in Lithuania this year.

The event will be capped off by a relay race, of sorts, using using rowing machines the club will bring to downtown Redwood City. Teams of eight to 12 rowers will compete to see who can cover the distance the fastest. The fundraiser is used for equipment maintenance and repair, safety equipment and support, and to fund the program’s scholarship and outreach programs.

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.