Cal-Hi Sports Changes For 2026-27

This is the cover illustration from the seventh edition of the Cal-Hi Sports State Record Book.

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For almost everyone in public education or educational high school sports, including coaches and CIF section/state officials, retirement age comes in the early 60s. They are in a state retirement system that makes it possible to just about make the same amount of money retired as they are if they continued in their jobs.

It’s not the same for journalists and editors who have been following high school sports in their communities for many, many years. Those such as Eric Sondheimer of the L.A. Times, John Maffei of the San Diego Union-Tribune, Steve Fryer of the Orange County Register and others who could now be retired just like what they do so much. I’d put my friend Mitch Stephens of the San Francisco Chronicle and High School Sports on SI in that group, too, but I’m not sure he’s in his mid to late 60s or older yet.

I am of the same mind-set as those other journalists. The big difference, though, is that Cal-Hi Sports and CalHiSports.com is not part of a much larger media company. It’s not a salaried job that can just continue on. I have to keep chasing dollars (mostly through subscriptions to our web site) to keep going and what’s going to happen to all of the massive info we have in our archives (including all-time state records in football, boys basketball, girls basketball, baseball and softball) when I’m not around? All of the work done by those others isn’t going to disappear on their media platforms.

This brings us to the upcoming 2026-27 school year. Is this an announcement that I am retiring and the CalHiSports.com site is closing down? No, it isn’t. But I am coming into a stage of life (turning 67 in September) in which the work that I do has to be more of what I am interested in and not necessarily the work that will drive traffic, gain more subscriptions and take so much time. Getting on social security will help with the dollars, but it’s not as if much of that is going to go to the website.

I owe it to my wife, Kathleen Moody, and the others in my family (my parents are both 91) to cut down on some of the time spent working on the website. Without Kathleen’s support over the past years since 2014 when I had to start working on my own again after 25 years of being part of Student Sports and ESPN, this site simply wouldn’t exist. No matter what happens, the site still has to pay for itself and for those who help provide additional content or it would get shut down. It definitely has done that through subscriptions and we thank the thousands of you who have signed up in the last two years.

After much consideration, here’s an outline of changes that are coming to the website.

Tulare’s Bob Mathias, the last from that school to be State Athlete of the Year (chosen retroactively) for 1947-48 school year, is shown on the cover of the fourth edition of the Cal-Hi Sports all-sports state record book.

Players of the Week — These will continue as well, but I’m not going to spend all of the extra time and resources to produce a big piece of content with photos of all honorees. It will be a long paragraph for each winner, it will get posted or included as part of a column, it will get some social media attention but it’s not going to be the same.

State Stat Stars — Looking around for every 200-yard rusher in football, every 30-point scorer in basketball and every no-hitter in baseball or softball isn’t going to happen any more, either. We’ll still be searching for players of the week, still be looking for state record related totals every week but more of the focus will be on those record updates. In fact, I will be looking to do more work in that role as the state records really are our biggest contributions in the high school space. May do more on coaching milestones, too.

People also may notice some additional differences on the site, such as not as many preseason all-section or all-area football teams and probably not as many posts per week. I do plan on adding a column for most weeks that would include record updates, reactions to big stories and looking ahead at upcoming CIF state championships.

Hopefully, the bottom line is that the content still being posted will be engaging enough for most of our longtime subscribers to stay with us and we hope some folks will like it even more.

Ronnie & Harold

If something sudden were to happen to me, the plan is for longtime managing editor Ronnie Flores to take over the site. Ronnie also would have a big say in the future of Cal-Hi Sports no matter what happens as I get older. His work on boys basketball rankings, all-state teams and more is expected to continue.

Harold Abend, our longtime girls basketball editor and contributor in many other ways, won’t be doing the athlete of the week features any more, but that isn’t a reflection on his work doing them. It has been great. He will have the opportunity to make just as much free-lance dollars for us, maybe more, with features and some event coverage, but that will be up to him.

Premium vs Free Content

We’ve always had a mix of it, which dates back to our early days with Student Sports and Rivals.com in the middle of the 2000s, but in recent years we’ve noticed many newspapers have gone to an almost 100 percent pay content model. Others, such as the fairly new WestCoastPreps.com, also have gone almost 100 percent pay content. We could theoretically sell ads to help pay for the costs of running the site, but in all my years with Student Sports and Rivals that was what my longtime partner, Andy Bark, did and did it very well. It’s not a strength and it takes away from other strengths, such as great content. The subscription model clearly works best for me.

Moving forward into the 2026-27 school year, a much higher percentage of our content is going to be behind the pay wall. All of the all-state teams, for example, will be premium (not just underclass and second team). As of now, the only free content will be preseason rankings, coaches of the year and players of the year plus special announcements such as this one.

I’m just not sure yet about continuing with all-state nominations for each sport (first lists free, second updated lists premium). It can be a waste of time for the top-level players but it’s a genuine honor for others. I welcome the input of others to help decide.

Cal-Hi Sports founder Nelson Tennis looks for a newspaper on microfilm at the state library in Sacramento in the 1990s. All California state high school records in five sports are based on Nelson’s research.

Would I consider selling the site for others to perhaps invest more money into a platform that has roots for nearly 50 years? It would have be the right price and I’d want to continue to be contributing to it, but yes it would be considered.

Breaking up the content into separate web sites in order to gain more dollars also has been brought up. That could mean a separate place where all of the state records are stored and would require a separate subscription to see. It could mean moving the content we have in a particular sport to a site/platform that only focuses on one sport and then providing stipend work to maintain that content on that other site/platform. As the internet has continued to evolve, silo-style websites with football only, basketball only, baseball only and softball only content have continued to thrive and that makes it harder for more horizontal sports sites like ours to add that many subscribers. There’s just too many times during the year when we’re not doing anything in all of those sports.

Some others I’ve known throughout the years, including the late Barry Sollenberger of Arizona, spent the final years of their careers in high school sports working for their state associations. I’m not opposed to doing something similar with the CIF, but I haven’t brought it up before. I think the current set of leaders at the CIF, including executive director Ron Nocetti and associate director Brian Seymour, are doing great and I love that they are continuing to grow the number of CIF state championship events. We also have always enjoyed working with media relations director Rebecca Brutlag.

We also plan to spend more time further explore possibilities with all of the memorabilia and sports records we have from our late friend Bruce McIntosh. He died in 2017 and just this summer we have finished going through all of the boxes and boxes of stuff he had when he passed from when he was living in Rio Vista. It was one of those projects in which it was an hour here and an hour there. But it’s now done. A lot of Bruce’s stuff will be donated to schools and CIF sections. The work of Bruce will never be forgotten if we have anything to do with it. We think the same about our longtime friend Bob Barnett of Fresno, but we think the CIF Central Section itself will be very motivated to keep Bob’s info up to date although Bob is still very much doing the work.

2026 Football Season

Folks may have noticed we haven’t done anything yet previewing the upcoming season. That’s because when we do, we’re starting a new cycle of how we’re going to do things and have been concentrating on finishing up the 2025-26 school year, especially with post-season honors for baseball and softball. We also still have State Schools of the Year and State Athletes of the Year to get done. The schools will be this week but the football info, beginning with record updates and more, also will be starting this week.

It’s not going to make sense to do any more class-by-class player rankings in football since the ones done by all of the major recruiting services are fine, get deeper all the time and now even have companies compiling consensus player rankings. What we are going to do, however, is put together top 100 player rankings based on their high school accomplishments and not recruiting. A top 100 player of the year watch list, regardless of class, just fits our all-state model a lot better. We will continue to post and promote class-by-class player rankings in boys basketball since Ronnie has been producing them and doing it competitively with others for many years.

Early in the season when there are so many great matchups to see, we will still be looking to get out to a lot of games to watch and cover in person. Going to section and state playoff games — we’ve been to every CIF state football final since the event re-started in 2006 — also is going to remain a priority. We plan to start taking photos of our own at some of those games, but probably are not going to go to as many games in late September and into October when teams are in league play.

In the past year and a half, all of our content, especially in football, has benefitted from the added work of intern Isai Gutierrez. The 2024 grad from Sierra High of Manteca has contributed some feature stories and has become an eye-catching photographer. He’s now graduated from Modesto Junior College and will be continuing to help us out while pursuing a communications degree from Cal State Stanislaus.

Bottom Line

We’re not going anywhere. We’re still very motivated to reach 50 years of doing this work and 50 years of various all-state teams. Time is marching on, however, and certain realities are beginning to set in. If anyone out there has suggestions, feel free to write to me at markjtennis@gmail.com. Text or call 209-608-1317. Thanks for reading and now starting tomorrow we go back to our regular programming.

Mark Tennis is the co-founder and publisher of CalHiSports.com. He can be reached at markjtennis@gmail.com. Don’t forget to follow Mark on the Cal-Hi Sports Twitter handle: @CalHiSports