Cal-Hi Sports Insider Blog

Quick-hitting, behind-the-scenes news and notes from the CalHiSports.com staff, including previews of upcoming content and events.

State’s Best Cheerleader Celebrities

Kendall Jenner cheered at 2011 CIF Division IV state championship at the StubHub Center in Carson when her school from Sierra Canyon (Chatsworth) defeated LeGrand 34-13. She’s of course with father Bruce Jenner (now known as Caitlyn Jenner). Photo: celebuzz.com.


With competitive cheer now joining the CIF as a sanctioned sport, here’s a list compiled from various files we’ve kept over the years of former cheerleaders (not all girls) from California high schools who later became famous in film, TV, music, popular culture and two who became governor. Yes, we know that the competitive aspect of it is not the same as just standing in front of the crowd leading the cheers and that many cheerleaders can be very athletic. This is just a fun way of celebrating the addition of a new CIF sport.

(If you have a name and a school of someone who should be on this list, just let us know by emailing markjtennis @gmail.com or responding with a comment)

Dakota Fannning enjoys the Friday night lights cheering for Campbell Hall High of North Hollywood. Photo: fanforum.com.


Paula Abdul (Van Nuys) Singer
Jerry Brown (St. Ignatius, San Francisco) Governor of California
Cameron Diaz (Long Beach Poly) Actress
Kirsten Dunst (Notre Dame, Sherman Oaks) Actress (played cheerleader in Bring It On)
Blake Lively (Burbank) Actress; married to actor Ryan Reynolds
Dakota Fanning (Campbell Hall, North Hollywood) Actress
Stacy Ann Ferguson (Wilson, Hacienda Heights) Singer, Songwriter & Actress (Fergie)
Sally Field (Birmingham, Lake Balboa) Actress
Teri Hatcher (Fremont, Sunnyvale) Actress; Comedian
Patty Hearst (Crystal Springs, Hillsborough) Kidnap Victim Turned Felon; later pardoned
Paris Jackson (Buckley, Sherman Oaks) Model; daughter of late Michael Jackson
Kendall Jenner (Sierra Canyon, Chatsworth) Model & TV Personality
Kylie Jenner (Sierra Canyon, Chatsworth) Model & TV Personality
Heather Locklear (Newbury Park) Actress & Model
Goodwin Knight (Manual Arts, Los Angeles) Governor of California (1953-1959)
Steve Martin (Garden Grove) Actor; Comedian
Michelle Pfieffer (Fountain Valley) Actress
Denise Richards (El Camino, Oceanside) Actress*
Michael Richards (Thousand Oaks) Actor; Kramer on Seinfeld
Alicia Silverstone (San Mateo) Actress
Sally Struthers (Grant, Van Nuys) Actress; Gloria on All In The Family
Cheryl Tiegs (Alhambra) Model
Lana Turner (Washington, Los Angeles) Actress**
Raquel Welch (La Jolla) Actress
Robert Young (Lincoln, Los Angeles) Actor

*In pictures of her, however, it looks like’s cheering for Torrey Pines.
**She wasn’t a cheerleader later at Hollywood High when famously discovered at local drug store.


FB: All-Time Preseason No. 1s

Check here for a look at preseason state No. 1 teams since 1979 and for how each of those teams finished in the final rankings. We begin with a historical look at preseason rankings beginning with Mater Dei for 2017.

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One Year Of Bagley Will Have To Do

Sierra Canyon basketball star will reclassify to the Class of 2017, will likely play for Duke during the coming season and then enter the NBA Draft next spring. He’ll never be Mr. Basketball for California, but will count as being from California on all-time historical lists.
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Softball: All-Time Top 25 Coming Soon

Another editorial project that we’ve started working on in the last week and plan to have completed before the start of the 2017 football season is actually not from football. That will be the selection of the 25 greatest softball teams in state history.
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A Tale of Heat Stroke All Should Know

A GoFundMe account has been set up to help with medical costs for a high school football heat stroke victim from Stockton. The key for all to know is that many of these cases we’ve covered over the years are not necessarily for varsity football players. It’s for the younger ones on the freshman, sophomore and JV levels who may not know their physical limitations quite yet and may be more timid to tell their coaches they’re in trouble.

Jayden Jones, an incoming freshman at Lincoln High in Stockton, remained hospitalized on Sunday at UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento after suffering a heat stroke injury at football practice last week. Jones was likely like thousands of incoming freshmen around the state as practices began last week, not knowing what to expect but interested in trying out for football.

As the CIF calendar has moved up one week earlier this year, however, the fears of heat-related football practice injuries are at an all-time high. And this first week of practice in the Central Valley was hot and humid.

The CIF itself has been sending out Twitter updates every day reminding all coaches and parents of heat-related health issues. We’re doing this post at Cal-Hi Sports as another reminder with the addition that a tale of an athlete suffering such an injury has already taken place.

Link HERE to a story on CBS13 out of Sacramento about Jayden’s situation.

Link HERE to a GoFundMe account set up by Jayden’s mother to help with expenses.

Have a great second week of practice everyone, but never lose sight of the health of all players and pay attention to all of the usual warning signs. Parents also need to tell their kids to never, ever be timid in asking for water breaks.


Sac High, Stockton High FB Win Totals

While updating the online portion of our state record book in the football team categories last week, we thought of going through the index cards we had in the office that contained all of the seasons played for Stockton High and Sacramento High.

A great majority of the school cards are in storage with managing editor Ronnie Flores, but we had the Stockton High and Sac High cards available and have always been curious whether Stockton High (which closed in 1954) had an all-time winning percentage good enough for the record book. For Sac High, since the school dates to the early 1890s, it was looking up a reported all-time win total.

Stockton did have some great teams — 10-0 in 1943, for example, with a lot of one loss squads — but a slow start prevented the Tarzans (yes, that was their nickname) from compiling an all-time record that makes the book. The record we came up with dating from the 1890s to 1956 was 246-166-31.

For Sacramento, the Dragons have been strong in recent years, including last year’s team that posted a win over Folsom, but they really struggled in the 1980s and 1990s. They do not yet have 500 all-time wins and still need a lot more 10-win seasons to reach .500. We figured out their all-time record to 458-488-34.

All of the index cards were compiled by our friend Bruce McIntosh. Several years ago, due a move, he couldn’t store them anymore where he was living so they went into storage. We can get to them through Ronnie and have used them as a service for schools interested in finding out about their football histories. It’s also possible to use them to look up win totals and sometimes those hunches turn out to be true (like with Pittsburg in Northern California). For Sac High and Stockton High, those are good totals to know but they don’t make the record book.


State Players on Polynesian POY Watch List

Nineteen players from California, many representing some of the highest-ranked teams for the preseason, have been selected for the first-ever Polynesian High School Football Player of the Year Watch List. The award will be presented annually to the most outstanding Polynesian senior high school football player in the nation.
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Baseball: ND’s Dill won 400th in 2017

Thanks to research provided by Cal-Hi Sports intern Thomas Frey at the state library in Sacramento, we have determined that longtime Notre Dame of Sherman Oaks baseball coach Tom Dill has more than 400 wins in his career that began in 1993.
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Pac-12’s “12 Greatest” from Calif.

Later this summer, the Pac-12 Networks will introduce a new series “The 12 Greatest” in which one football player from each of the conference’s 12 schools will be crowned as the greatest player from that school’s history. Here’s a look at each university’s top candidates who are from California high schools and who have been researched extensively for many of our Cal-Hi Sports state record lists:
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Honorable Mention Schools of Year

To go with our annual State Schools of the Year tribute, here are some additional schools that were on our board in the various CIF state divisions and in our own five-division format that we would consider to be honorable mention.
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