Greg Hansen: Who's No. 1? Ranking the top 5 Tucson teams for 2022-23 school year

Who’s No. 1? Let’s just say Tucson high school teams won 14 state championships in the 2022-23 academic year. How do you pick just one as No. 1?

I mean, Salpointe Catholic’s boys and girls cross-country and track coach, Mike Urbanski, has produced 10 state championships since 2016. One man. Ten titles.

The field is loaded.

So if you’re planning to make a list of the best teams in Tucson in any given academic year — especially once you add Arizona’s 19 sports and Pima College’s 13 — you’d better be prepared to make some exacting choices and spend a summer day or two researching each sport.

It’s no longer an issue of asking, “What team did Lute Olson or Mike Candrea coach last year?”

The competition is formidable. Tucson high school teams have won 42 state championships across the last three years, believed to be the most for a three-year period in our city’s grand sports history.

Of the 22 boys and girls events made available by the Arizona Interscholastic Association, Tucson teams won a state championship in every sport except football and swimming in that period.

And that’s just three years.

Here are our top five Tucson teams for the 2022-23 school year:

1. Pima College baseball

The Aztecs have always been considered something of a baseball school, but the league is so good that they haven’t won an ACCAC title since 1991.

If you were to tour the baseball facilities of the 14 junior colleges in the wickedly difficult ACCAC, you would see national-championship banners almost everywhere you walked: Yavapai, Central Arizona, Mesa, Glendale College, Phoenix College and on and on. Others, such as Cochise College, have been a Top 25-level baseball program for the last decade.

To survive and advance, winning the region playoffs this season, Ken Jacome’s Aztecs first had to benefit from the elimination of the west’s top JC baseball team, Central Arizona College, winner of the 2022 and 2019 national championships, and the 2021 runner-up.

PCC won 46 games, its most victories since the 1985 season. On the buy-or-sell platform, Jacome’s Aztecs are definitely a “buy.”

“We’ll be back,” Jacome said. “I feel like this is a steppingstone for us, and we’ll get that last step eventually.”

2. Salpointe softball

On the opening day of the 2023 season, coach Tricia Sztan’s Lancers played a tripleheader, with games at 10 a.m., 2 p.m., and 6 p.m.

At the end of softball’s version of the longest day, Salpointe had outscored Cholla, Buena and Pueblo 48-1. It was a powerful warning that the Lancers were capable of matching or exceeding their state championships of 2022, 2021, 2019 and 2018.

Salpointe went 35-1, tying Canyon del Oro’s epic 2011 team for the most victories in Tucson softball history. The Lancers won their last 24 games in succession, produced a .403 team batting average — six Lancer starters hit .400 or better — and outscored their five state tournament opponents 31-8.

3. Arizona men’s tennis

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Winning a Pac-12 regular-season championship, as Clancy Shields’ Wildcats did this year (a three-way tie with Utah and USC), shouldn’t be taken lightly.

Over the last 10 Pac-12 seasons, 2014-2023, Arizona has won just 10 league championships in all sports. Or, one per year. Arizona had not won a Pac-12 men’s tennis title — had rarely even been competitive — since joining the league in 1978.

But Shields has now won two consecutive league regular-season championships. The only other UA coach to do so the last decade was basketball’s Sean Miller (2014 and 2015).

The Wildcats (23-7) were eliminated in a down-to-the-last-serve nail-biter by No. 3 Ohio State in the NCAA Tournament; the Buckeyes went on to finish No. 2 nationally.

You could make a case that the men’s tennis team has become the No. 1 program in the UA athletic department

4. Sunnyside wrestling

For the first time in state history, an Arizona prep wrestling team scored more than 300 points in the state championship meet. Few were surprised it was David Leon’s Blue Devils, who held one of the state’s top-five all-time marks with 277 points when they won the 2020 title.

There are 14 weight classes in Arizona’s prep wrestling championships. Sunnyside won seven of those classes and finished No. 2 in five more. It more than doubled runner up Peoria Liberty, which scored 151. It was the first time a state champ had more than doubled the No. 2 finisher.

“We’re pretty greedy,” Leon said. “We want to win everything.”

Everything? The Blue Devils have won six consecutive state wrestling championships.

5. Salpointe boys soccer

In winning its four state playoff games, the Lancers outscored the opposition 8-1, 8-0, 4-0 and 4-1. Over the course of a 23-2 season, Coach Wolfgang Weber’s club outscored its opponents 120-38.

The only real suspense would’ve been for the AIA to create an Open division playoff and pit 4A Salpointe against 5A champ Scottsdale Horizon and 6A champ Gilbert Perry, who had a combined record of 37-3-5.

Salpointe has been so dominant in Class 4A it has won the last three boys state championships with a combined record of 57-5-3.

It’s a familiar pattern. In all sports, Salpointe has dominated Southern Arizona high school sports for the last decade the way Tucson High did in the 1940s, a decade in which the Badgers won a then-dazzling 27 state titles in baseball, football, basketball and track.

It was a record that seemed safe for eternity.

By comparison, Salpointe has won 37 state championships the last 10 years, dwarfing the eight TUSD schools, which combined to win 16 in the same period.

The only thing for certain is that Tucson always seems to have plenty of answers when you ask, “Who’s No. 1?” This year we’ll go with Pima College’s resurgent baseball team.