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Sports

Poway Beating RB: It's More Than a Rivalry, It's a Way of Life

Think Red Sox vs. Yankees, or better yet, UCLA vs. USC.

On senior night Friday, the Poway High softball team lost to crosstown rival Rancho Bernardo High 6-5 under the lights at Lake Poway.

According to Titans third baseman and No. 3 hitter Haley Steele, this was the most important game of the year—aside from a potential CIF playoff appearance.

“Your excitement is peaked against your rival just because it’s tradition,” Steele said.

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And losing to them is that much more painful.

“All league games are important, but this was our senior night and it’s against our rival, so it stings a little bit more,” Steele said.

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“People care more about an RB game, in any sport—in volleyball, tennis, everything—than they care about CIF playoffs,” said senior Tosten Burks, the self-proclaimed No. 1 fan at Poway High. “People don’t remember how far the teams got in CIF, but the RB game is the most memorable game of the year.”

As Paul Rudy said on the PPR All Sports Report on Friday night, introducing the highlights to the softball game, “even when Poway and RB play tiddlywinks it’s a big deal.”

The rivalry between Poway and RB cannot be understated.

Burks, also the former sports editor and current associate editor for the Poway student newspaper The Iliad, thinks there's another reason.

“The big thing is that the divisions and conferences for the sports teams have been shuffled around so much the past couple of years. But Poway and RB have always remained in the same division because the school sizes have remained similar and location-wise, it is like an eight-minute drive to RB,” Burks noted.

“I think it gets compounded by the fact that people at RB went to middle school with people at Poway, there is a lot of overlap, and I think that the fact that people personally know students at RB on a large scale is a major thing that keeps it up.”

These are schools that take everything as a challenge when it comes to beating the other.

Take the API scores—the Academic Performance Index, which indicates the schools’ performance level. It takes the California Standardized Testing and the CAHSEE scores to determine the API score.

Poway sports a 2010 API score of 857, a figure that Principal Scott Fisher takes a little too much pride in and has no problem throwing out anytime he needs to remind someone how great Poway is.

 RB’s 2010 score is 855.

“At first the API score was a joke when Principal Fisher would make a big deal about it, then we started taking it seriously and a bunch of people have shirts that have our API score on it,” Burks said.

There are even Facebook pages dedicated to the rivalry, with the “RB beating Poway” page beating out the “Poway beating RB” page by a 75 “like” margin. Arguments on the pages include which page was created first, with Poway backers claiming they were first.

With any rivalry comes the shenanigans.

RB has tagged various parts of Poway High over the years, with the “P” on the football field and the “rock” being recent victims.

On a yearly basis, Poway students mock RB students during the student production Titan Times, where Brittany and Brad Bronco are constantly portrayed as unintelligent and ditzy, though last year the administration cracked down and decided to change Titan Times to a more friendly production.

The rivalry even extends to the marching bands. The Poway band hates the RB band, mostly because they win competitions all the time and also because their shows are always boring—I can say this from experience having been a member of the Emerald Brigade for four years.

It is even a punishment to a Poway student to get sent to RB, because where do most expelled students from Poway get sent?

That’s right, RB.

With Poway High celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, it wouldn’t be surprising if RB High had a 21-year celebration, just so they can feel as important as Poway.

The key piece to this, and any, rivalry is the fact that both schools are really good at everything they do. Sure, Poway has a marginally higher API score, but RB is close behind. Sure, Poway’s athletics are top-notch, but again RB is close behind.

“The students are what make it so big,” Burks said. “Because students don’t care about the sports, they care about talking smack about the sports; they care about bragging to their friends at RB. I think the fact that you have so many people to talk smack to is what makes it so large year in and year out.”

It can’t be a rivalry without passionate fans, and passionate fans are what Poway and RB have. “RB’s fan base is so vicious to all schools, and with Poway and our administration being so strict at games, an RB game is our one time to let loose and go crazy,” Burks said.    

And with the softball team's loss to RB, which drops the Titans' record to 18-5 and 2-1 in the Palomar League, the rivalry lives on.

Observations for the week that was April 17-22:

There is not much I dislike about 4SD—other than wishing Matt Vasgersian was still alongside Mark Grant in the booth. The one thing I am not a fan of is 4SD’s MLB scoreboard scroll on the bottom of the screen. It is too big and it changes the ratio of the picture, not to mention the fact that I never look at it for the scores since I flip to ESPN during the commercials because their bottom line is so much better…

Speaking of 4SD, Cox announced that after this season, with the Padres TV rights contract expiring, it will most likely not be able to compete with other companies to get the rights to Padres games…

This is why soccer is becoming a more popular sport in America—not sure what is more impressive, the entire crowd singing, or that they knew all the words. Poor Christina Aguilera…

And cool mascots who cut logs also make watching soccer that much more appealing. I am now a fan of the MLS Portland Timbers…

Cincinnati Reds starting pitcher Mike Leake of Fallbrook was arrested on Monday for allegedly stealing $59.88 worth of T-shirts from a store. Leake is scheduled to make $425,000 in his second season in the Majors. We could give him the benefit of the doubt and say he didn’t have any money because he was paying back a student loan from attending Arizona State University—oh wait, never mind. He was on scholarship…

MLB took control of the Los Angeles Dodgers on Wednesday, this because of the messy divorce of team owners Frank and Jamie McCourt. As Padre fans, we have to be glad that the Moores’ divorce was a lot less climatic…

Fantasy Corner:

As much as it pains me to say it, it wouldn’t be the worst idea to stream the opposing pitchers the Padres face. The Pads’ .214 team batting average and 60 total runs scored in 20 games don’t scare anybody—except Padres fans and management.

Sports Tweet of the Week:

This from the XTRA sports 1360 radio personality Ben Higgins @XTRA1360Ben: “The fact that the Padres lead the NL with a 2.97 ERA is even more impressive when you consider they don’t get to play the Padres.”  

For the Record:

Padres prospect and first baseman Anthony Rizzo, acquired in the Adrian Gonzalez deal, will be up in the majors before September when the rosters expand to 40. Especially if current first baseman duo Jorge Cantu and Brad Hawpe cannot improve on their .140 and .116 batting averages respectively.

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