Winter sports: You’re up next

So despite being a holiday week, teams are wasting little time in getting their seasons going, with games in and around the Peninsula and the greater Central Coast Section. Granted, it’s the first game of the season, but there is one really intriguing basketball meeting as Milpitas comes to Belmont to take on Carlmont.

Both these teams are coming off fantastic 2024-25 seasons, with the Scots claiming the CCS Division I title and advanced to the Nor Cal Division IV semifinals. Milpitas captured the Santa Clara Valley Athletic League’s De Anza Division crown. That earned the Trojans a spot in the Open Division, where they went 2-1 beating Bellarmine and Serra, sandwiched around a St. Ignatius loss.

Both teams will come into the opener having to reload their rosters after graduating a number of seniors, but it is still a good matchup to whet your basketball appetite.

If you wanted to check out a good girls’ game locally, head out to San Bruno to see CCS Division V power Summit Shasta-Daly City take on a Capuchino squad that returns all but two players from a team that went 13-11 last season and went 1-1 in CCS play.

The Mustangs will already have a game under their belts after opening against Mercy Monday.

The rest of the week is pretty quiet before everyone jumps back in Saturday, which features a number of good games for local fans — including Aragon at Burlingame at 6 p.m., Sequoia at Serra at 7 p.m., and just a little drive south on Highway 101, Half Moon Bay takes on St. Francis in Mountain View at 7:30 p.m.

The soccer schedule is a bit lighter this week than basketball, but there still is a fun, intense matchup with some San Mateo bragging rights on the line when Aragon makes the short trip across to town to rival San Mateo Wednesday for a noon kickoff.

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With all the postseason craziness going on this past week, a couple of playoff results slipped through the cracks, mostly because the results weren’t updated in a timely manner.

First, Sacred Heart Prep girls’ tennis captured the CCS doubles championship, the first tennis title for the Gators since Sara Choy won back-to-back singles titles in 2014 and 2015.

That’s three CCS titles for the Gators this postseason, joining the boys’ and girls’ water polo teams.

Charlotte Weber and Jena Azmeh, the top seed in the doubles draw, dropped only five games through the first two rounds, winning 6-1, 6-1 over a Wilcox pair in the first round and a 6-1, 6-2 decision over a team from Evergreen Valley in the second round.

That set up a semifinal match against fourth-seeded Zoe Hendricks and Megan Bence of Carlmont, who won the Peninsula Athletic League doubles title.

But Weber and Azmeh, who won the West Bay Athletic League doubles crown, cruised into the finals with a 6-1, 6-3 win.

In the championship match, they took on the No. 2 seed from Monta Vista, Leilani and Zoe Laruelle. And for the first time in the tournament, Weber and Azmeh were pushed. They outlasted the Laruelle sisters, 7-5, in the first set, but the Monta Vista duo rallied back to win the second set, 6-4, and set up a third-set, super tiebreaker.

And Weber and Azmeh prevailed, 10-8 to give SHP its first CCS doubles title since Sam Rosenkrans and Haley Hemm won the crown in 2006.

In the community college soccer playoffs, the Cañada men set up an all-San Mateo County, Northern California quarterfinal showdown as the fifth-seeded Colts (12-2-6) needed penalty kicks to get past No. 12 Feather River (18-5-0) Saturday afternoon.

After 90 minutes of scoreless regulation and two more 10-minute, extra-time periods, Cañada outlasted the Golden Eagles 4-3 in spot kicks.

The win sets up a home game at 2 p.m. Tuesday against rival and 13th-seeded Skyline (13-4-5), which upset No. 4 Cosumnes River (12-6-3), 1-0.

Cañada and Skyline met once during the regular season, with the Colts posting a 3-0 win.

In the women’s soccer playoffs, the Lady Colts were one-and-done.

Like the Cañada men, the Cañada women (14-3-4), the fourth seed, went to overtime. Unlike the men, the Lady Colts gave up the game’s only goal in the first overtime period and could not match it, falling 1-0 to 13th-seeded Santa Rosa (11-7-3).

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.