Lopez: How did I do with my preseason predictions? Well, not too bad

Only one more night of high school football remains in the Stanislaus District as both Escalon and Ripon vie for CIF State titles on Saturday.

It has been another exciting year filled with games going down to the wire and unexpected breakout players.

Before Saturday, I thought I’d take a look at my preseason predictions, which were published on Aug. 22, the day before the start of the season.

I made predictions for each of the leagues in the Stanislaus District and correctly picked six of the eight winners.

However, only Big Valley Christian, Ripon Christian, and Turlock won their leagues outright while Central Catholic, Escalon and Sonora all shared league titles.

So, do those all qualify as wins? Let’s just go with yes and not get into an argument.

I had Patterson winning in the Central California Conference and Buhach Colony rolled to a CCC title. I also picked Los Banos to win the Western Athletic Conference and Beyer won the league.

Perhaps my boldest prediction that might actually come true came from the Trans-Valley League: “ Escalon will do what Hilmar did last year: win a section and state title.”

Spot on, so far.

Still, I also said Big Valley Chrisitan and Ripon Christian would play for section championships. Neither happened.

Where I failed was in our games to watch predictions every week:

Jim predicted 78% of his games correctly while I was at 60%.

Ouch.

I also had fans telling me to keep picking against their teams because they kept winning.

Double ouch.

With the season ending, Jim Silva and I are starting to work on our All-District Team selections so please send nominees to jalopez@modbee.com.

Section announces Fall Academic Team Champions: The CIF Sac-Joaquin Section announced its fall academic team champions on Wednesday and Enochs and Pitman each had teams with the top cumulative GPA’s.

Enochs’ boys water polo team led all teams with a 3.5 GPA while Pitman girls tennis had 3.81. Both schools will receive white banners, which are similar to the blue championship banners teams get for winning section titles.

Orestimba had two teams place in the top five (girls volleyball and girls golf) and Enochs had two teams (football, girls tennis) as well.

----

Julian A. Lopez’s preseason predictions vs. who actually won the Stanislaus District league titles

Julian A. Lopez

The Modesto Bee

562-206-9393

Julian A. Lopez has been covering local sports for The Modesto Bee since August 2018. He graduated from Arizona State in 2016 with a BA in Journalism.