Seven coaches, administrators and game officials from the CIF San Diego Section will be honored at the annual California Coaches Association’s awards banquet on June 20 in San Pedro.

Manny Hermosillo, longtime baseball coach at Montgomery High School, and Bruce Ward, former football coach and athletic director at Escondido High School and longtime Director of PE, Health and Interscholastic Athletics in the San Diego Unified School District, will be inducted into the CCA Hall of Fame.

Hermosillo coached baseball at Montgomery for 41 years, finishing his career with 769 wins. That’s second in the San Diego Section behind Sam Blalock, who won 946 games at Mt. Carmel and Rancho Bernardo. No other coach in the section has more than 671 victories.

Hermosillo won 15 league championships and the 2000 CIF San Diego Section title.

Ward graduated from Kearny High School, where he was an offensive lineman. He went on to play at San Diego City College and San Diego State. He was a sixth-round draft pick of the San Diego Chargers in 1972. He spent time in the NFL with the Chargers and Kansas City Chiefs and with the Southern California Sun of the World Football League.

After coaching in Illinois and Oklahoma, Ward returned to California, where he was Escondido’s football coach and athletic director. He left for the school district in 2000.

Other awards:

• Dave Cassaw, the boys basketball coach at La Costa Canyon; Tony Corley, football coach at San Pasqual; and Roni Greenwood-Hooper, the girls volleyball coach at Scripps Ranch, were named coaches of the year by the California Coaches Association.

Cassaw has coached 27 years at LCC and has 559 wins, which is seventh all-time in the San Diego Section. His Mavericks have won six section championships, including the Open Division in 2013-14.

Corley recently retired after 19 years as head coach of the Eagles, finishing with a 111-95-1 record and five league championships. Greenwood-Hooper has coached girls volleyball at Scripps Ranch for 10 seasons, compiling a 205-121 record. The Falcons were San Diego Section Division 1 champions in 2025.

• Duane Hurd was named one of the Officials of the Year by the CCA. Hurd is the longtime president of the North County Basketball Officials Association.

Baseball forfeits

Concord De La Salle’s baseball team canceled its first five games of the season, including two against San Diego Section teams. According to the San Jose Mercury News, the Spartans broke school policies and a team rule and violated the school’s code of conduct.

De La Salle was scheduled to play St. Augustine and Cathedral Catholic in a tournament at USD. De La Salle is the reigning NorCal Division 1 champion.

State recognition

MaxPreps.com Preseason All-American baseball team includes University City first baseman/left-handed pitcher AJ Curry, who has signed to play at Tennessee.

ESPN listed Mater Dei Catholic junior pitcher Arri Romero as one of the top 20 junior softball players in the nation. Committed to play at Arizona, Romero won 24 games last season for the Crusaders.

Tournaments coming up

The 75th annual Lions Baseball Tournament, which features 140 teams in nine divisions, is slated for March 30-April 2 at a number of schools across the county.

The Open Division features Point Loma, Eastlake, Patrick Henry, Rancho Bernardo, Torrey Pines, San Marcos, Cathedral Catholic, Granite Hills, La Costa Canyon, Sage Creek and St. Augustine. Out-of-town teams in the Open Division include Lake Balboa Birmingham, Elk Grove, Woodland Hills El Camino Real, Simi Valley and Sacramento Christian Brothers.

Patrick Henry is the only San Diego representative in the prestigious Southern California Boras Classic. The Patriots open play April 7 against Cerritos Gahr in a noon game at San Jose Capistrano JSerra.

Jones passes

Tom Jones, the longtime team statistician for the Del Norte High School boys basketball team, passed away recently at age 77.

Jones and his son Dan also provided official stats for football and basketball championships.

Tom Jones played high school basketball for Edina (Minn.) High School, winning a state championship. He went on to play at the University of Montana and the University of Minnesota. He moved to California in 2009.

Box: U-T’s Maffei among California Coaches Association’s Hall of Fame honorees

Union-Tribune reporter John Maffei will receive the Edmund Strelow Media Award at the California Coaches Association’s Hall of Fame induction ceremony in June.

Maffei has spent the last 48 years writing for newspapers in and around San Diego, joining the Union-Tribune after decades at the North County Times, Oceanside Blade-Tribune and Escondido Times-Advocate. He has covered more than 5,000 high school games in his career, including dozens of CIF San Diego Section football, basketball and baseball championships. Maffei serves as a member of the San Diego Coaching Legends selection committee, the American Legion Baseball committee and the San Diego Jocks board of managers.

An Escondido resident, Maffei is also a longtime member of the Baseball Writers Association of America, an official scorer at Padres games and chief of the Los Angeles Chargers stat crew.

— RYAN FINLEY