I spoke with Rudy Ruiz, the father of Bishop Amat standout Rio Ruiz, who was selected in the fourth round of the Major League Baseball draft earlier this month, about the possibility of Rio signing with Houston or going to USC. Rudy said the family is still negotiating with Houston and a decision could come soon.

The awards just keep on coming for Bonita High School pitcher Justin Garza. Garza was named today a first-team All-American by one of the most respected publications in the business, Baseball America. To put that in perspective, Garza is one of only 16 players nationwide and three from California to make the prestigious first team list. Garza, who was 25-1 over the last two years, led the Bearcats to the Division 3 title in a 5-1 victory over Alhambra. This is why I stated earlier that Garza is the best high school pitcher I ever covered.

Joe Conte Sr., the San Gabriel Valley Football Officials Association liaison to the CIF-Southern Section and football official for more than four decades, passed away on Fathers Day Sunday. Keep Joe in your thoughts and prayers.

I’ve been hearing for nearly a year our Blogs are moving from Moveable Type to Word Press and it appears we’re finally ready to make the switch. I received an email today explaining that sometime over the next two to three weeks that our blogs will be unavailable for at least a day, and possibly longer, while the blogs are moved from Moveable Type to World Press. When I receive a firm date on exactly when it will happen, I will pass it on. This will happen to all our blogs at the SGVN, not just this one. From what I understand, everything on the current blogs, including the archives, will be moved to the new blogs, a huge plus in keeping our history on file. One of the biggest questions for all of us is how the comments will work. I’m still not sure, but looking at other word press blogs, there appears to be three options, through Facebook, Twitter or by creating a sign-name through word press, similar to what we already have. This will allow commenters who wish to stay anonymous, stay anonymous, which should make a lot of you extremely happy. From what I understand, Word Press is the best and fastest blog server around, but I don’t know much beyond that, nor do I know how the new blogs will look. I’ll wait in anticipation like the rest..

We unveil the all-area teams this week. Baseball will run in Wednesday’s paper and Softball on Thursday. Boys Tennis will run on Friday, the same day as the Hall of Fame All-Star Football game at West Covina High School. Track and Swimming all-area teams will run on June 27 and 28, respectively. At least that’s the plan.

BTW, I’ve declared that Tijuana’s on San Bernardino Road/Azusa Ave, in Covina have the best taco’s in the San Gabriel Valley.