San Diego Section Division III girls water polo championship

Moments after the Torrey Pines boys’ basketball team had completed a 74-43 drubbing of visiting Poway in the Friday night’s CIF Open Division tournament opener, the arena speakers were blaring the good time ‘70’s Sister Sledge classic “We Are Family.”

At halftime of Wednesday’s CIF Girls’ Soccer Open Division quarterfinal, No. 1 seeded Cathedral Catholic had a 1-0 lead over visiting eighth seed San Marcos but Dons’ Head Coach Dawn Lee, owner of over 400 career wins and eight section titles, was not satisfied with what she’d seen in the first 40 minutes.

Top-seeded Cathedral Catholic and second seed Torrey Pines delivered home victories in Tuesday night’s CIF Boys’ Soccer Open Division Quarterfinal action and neighborhood counterpart Canyon Crest, the sixth seed, joined next Tuesday’s semi-final party as the only lower seed to survive the first round of the playoffs.

When it comes to girls’ high school soccer in San Diego, the North Coast is where the action is.

In a game with huge Avocado West League championship implications, the Torrey Pines boys soccer team scored four goals in the first 20 minutes Tuesday night, Feb. 11, en route to a 5-0 runaway victory at Canyon Crest Academy.

Rich Amooi’s latest novel set in Del Mar and San Diego

Some folks love to spend a leisurely Sunday morning strolling the stalls of a gourmet farmers market, scoping out seasonal offerings from local growers and purveyors, and feeling like part of the community. A couple of Sundays ago, I joined a group of intrepid foodies in a farmers market trip on steroids — an adventure that began in the state-of-the-art Studio Kitchen, San Diego headquarters of Specialty Produce, the glitterati of fruit and vegetable sellers. There, the first in a series of “Food as Medicine Cooking Classes” was launched by Chef Christina Ng, chair of the Berry Good Food Academy, a non-profit that embarks on benevolent food programs.

Author Rebecca Makkai discusses her work at RSF Literary Society event

On the evening of Feb. 8, 2020, almost 1,000 art-lovers and techies turned out for the opening of “Illumination,” at San Diego Art Institute (SDAI) in Balboa Park. Subtitled “21st Century Interactions with Art, Science and Technology,” the show paired 16 local artists with scientists from seven different La Jolla-based research institutions to see what kind of artworks could result from their interactions in the fields of Global Health, Climate Change and Sustainability, and Touch-Screen Technology. The artists and scientists seemed to appreciate the opportunity to connect with each other, and an additional 10 artists were invited to create their own works on similar themes.

Here comes “Fly,” a new Wendy-centered musical opening at La Jolla Playhouse Feb. 18. And it’s offering a whole new Pan-orama, with a re-imagined Wendy taking center stage. Book-writer (and co-lyricist) Rajiv Joseph is a playwright best known for his Pulitzer Prize-nominated “Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo” and “Guards at the Taj,” which had a controversial production at the Playhouse in 2016. (I loved it.) “Fly” is an offbeat take on J.M. Barrie’s “Peter and Wendy,” a 1911 novel that was the Scottish-born, London-based writer’s follow-up to his hugely successful 1904 play “Peter Pan, or the Boy Who Would Never Grow Up.”

San Diego International Jewish Film Festival is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, and Feb. 13-23, 2020 will show 35 films in four different venues: Reading Cinemas Town Square in Clairemont, Garfield Theatre at Lawrence Family Jewish Community Center in La Jolla, Museum of Photographic Arts (MOPA) in Balboa Park, and La Paloma Theatre in Encinitas. There’s a lot to choose from, with dramas, comedies and documentaries about the arts, history, sports, family conflicts, and Israeli-Palestinian relations.

Casey Cep weaves together three intriguing stories in her new book – a string of mysterious deaths linked to a southern preacher who may have dabbled in voodoo, a liberal attorney with political ambitions in deeply conservative Alabama, and the attempted comeback of a beloved author.

Eilene Zimmerman had been divorced from her husband, Peter, for several years when she began to notice something wasn’t right.

“The Great Leap,” a basketball-centric play, is coming to Old Town San Diego’s Cygnet Theatre Jan. 22, 2020. Written by multi-award-winner Lauren Yee, it was one of the 10 most-produced plays in the United States in 2019, along with her “Cambodian Rock Band,” recently staged at La Jolla Playhouse. “The Great Leap,” which premiered in Denver in 2018, is about an American basketball team going to China for an exhibition game. There’s more than a game at stake; there are long-buried personal histories, a clash of dreams and ambitions, and the main setting is Beijing in 1989, when student protesters were about to be massacred in Tienanmen Square. With all this going on, there’s still plenty of humor — one of the playwright’s conspicuous gifts.

A new book by a British-born, San Diego-based author examines leadership failures in a variety of arenas, including business, politics, the defense industry, nonprofits and education, and offers a blueprint for leaders in all walks of life to become more effective and successful.