Sportstars
Method To Rankings Madness
State of Play: Mark Tennis (California Football Preseason TOP 20 follows below)    Preseason prep football coverage tends to be dominated by rankings of the top teams, but looking at players has always been important as well.    Key factors one always looks at for teams includes returning starters, what happened... Read more
   If you happen to be, or have been, an athlete in any sport then you know how important it is for you to have the best season of your life every season. For me, the sport of choice was football.     I was blessed to be able to... Read more
   Our football team hasn’t been that good recently, but this year, we’re going to shock the world. We’ve had a great offseason, our new coaches are super and we’ve all made it our goal to win the league. No one thinks we can do it and people tell... Read more
   Each year in early August, myself and SportStars Sac-Joaquin content coordinator, Jim McCue, sit down and begin to plan out our football coverage — and not just for the Preview, but for the season as a whole, too.     Often times we throw out questions to one another... Read more
Vincent Byrd II Still Swinging so we went Byrd Watching
Four years after gracing our cover as an eighth-grade slugger, Vincent Byrd II is still swinging away Vincent Byrd II counts his blessings like he counts on the advice of four former professional baseball players. The 6-foot-7-inch graduate of Sacramento’s El Camino High sounds sincerely thankful when asked about... Read more
De La Salle football has played its share of heavyweights, but it embarks on new ground Aug. 29 Read more
Counting down from 75 to 1, it’s our third annual ranking of the Bay Area’s top 75 athletes Read more
Brittany Usinger – Acalanes – Lafayette – Swimming – Senior (2015 grad)
The Harvard-bound Usinger closed out her standout career at Acalanes as a record-setting double-winner at the North Coast Section Championships. She set an NCS-record in the 100-yard butterfly when she won her qualifying heat with a time of 52.43 seconds.  Read more
   Performing a lift to the point of failure can be a good thing — if you know when you’re failing.   Powered By Trucks : Anthony Trucks    There are so many ways to train, and one of the most underused forms is failure sets.     Failure sets are... Read more
   Football coaches have plenty to focus on in practice, and proper conditioning can get lost in the shuffle    Training Time: Tim Rudd    Football season is right around the corner and that means summer football camp is going strong. So here are three of the most common... Read more
   Your nutrition habits before practice are just as vital as they are before a game.     Eating well before practice is just as important as eating well before competition. If you are well fueled, you’ll be better able to train hard, which means that you’ll have an edge over... Read more
   By the time this issue hits the web, and then the streets, there will already be some NorCal school districts who have begun their academic year. So long, Summer. We hardly knew ye.     Now, we could use this entire column to a Grandpa Simpson-like rant on how... Read more