Sports

Watsonville has 63 players on its varsity team, 41 on junior varsity and 46 at the freshman level. Those are numbers that numerous programs across the tri-county would love to have, but can’t seem to replicate.

With his wrestling career on hold until the winter, Slay’s racing career got a major boost on Aug. 1, when the 17-year-old scored his first United States Auto Club Speed2 Western Dirt Midget race win at the Ventura County Fair.

Aptos High alumna Nikki Hiltz took third place in the elite female division of the Guardian Mile race in Cleveland, Ohio on Saturday.

Aptos last season finished runner-up to eventual CCS Open Division I champion, Salinas High, in the now-defunct Monterey Bay League Gabilan division. For many, the team’s 6-1 run through the powerhouse league was an impressive feat. For the Mariners, it was a “disappointing” end to an otherwise solid season.

Heading into the first day of class, St. Francis, a private school of roughly 250 students, has just 19 players on its roster — 13 seniors and six juniors.

After a disappointing campaign in 2017, there is a palpable excitement heading into the first season of the Rodriguez era. The tempo has been upped, and the player-to-player accountability has been restored. A repeat of last year’s 4-6 record, which was the program’s first losing season since 2013, won’t be acceptable for the players.

Kokkinakis became just the fifth player in the tournament’s history to win both the singles and doubles titles.

Watsonville impressively has 63 players on its roster and a majority of them have packed on the muscle and trimmed off the fat in hopes of building on last year’s winning season, the program’s first since 2009.

Brad Furr won the 30-lap Taco Bravo Sprint Car Main Event Friday night at Ocean Speedway in Watsonville.

With the school’s long-awaited athletic fields also finally moving ahead, Pajaro Valley could be on the verge of becoming a blossoming football program. And this year’s senior class — 14 of the 31 players on roster — wants to be the group to spark that change.