Nelson Perla Ward who helped Sacred Heart win
CCS just yesterday was once a star for Paly in water polo, and drew the ire of a Paly essayist

During his senior year at Paly, scholar athlete Josh Stern, now at Brown, describes seven cases of Paly athletes leaving for private schools (or PAUSD students) and two counter-examples, Keller Chryst and Tolbert, of blue chip players arriving from elsewhere to bolster the Vikings sports dynasty.

My response, I just posted, to his spring 2013 research and analysis:

This is a great story, Mr. Stern.

One ironic point is that Paly’s top 3 athletes that year, Floreal, B. J. Boyd and Dawkins, all live in Gunn district and transferred to Paly specifically to play sports.

One you missed is Alex Blandino, Jordan, St. Francis, Stanford and now Reds bonus baby, a shortstop.

Jeremy Lin: Kings Academy, JLS Paly, Linsanity: but Gunn students his former teammates and classmates held up indicting signs his senior year.

George Packer, Gunn 1976 and writer for the New Yorker notes in passing the rise of the private schools in the area relative to our still-excellent yet flagging public institutions.

But Paly poaching South Palo Alto athletes and dominating the use of Tinsley athletes is an under-told story and more prominent, this Gunn alum would say.

Perla-Ward winning CCS yesterday with Is Nothing Sacred? and then being quoted in the Merc is what prompts my sussing you out today, in 2014.

A lift from his article, published in April, 2013 Paly Vikings sports magazine and online:

Upon asking these athletes, a common thread emerged: It was generally not anything expressly negative about Paly that caused the athletes to transfer or enroll at other high schools. Rather, most can attribute the switch to educational reasons, personal connections with sports teams, recruiting and a variety of other factors. Many of these athletes have made names not only for themselves, but also contributed greatly to their schools, which include Sacred Heart Preparatory, the Menlo School, St. Francis, Bellarmine, Archbishop Mitty and many others. – See more at: http://vikingsportsmag.com/features/2013/04/26/what-if/#comment-50782

begs the question: where is Josh Stern today?

see also: I just rattled the fences privately to former mayor Greg Scharff recently re-elected and yes he got my vote and head of Community Service challenging the legitimacy on these grounds and historical about a JEREMY LIN PLAYED HERE sign at new $25 M Mitchell Center half-court. On one hand, it does emphasize the South Palo Alto roots of Mr. Linsane, but on the other it further glorifies and hagios (if that is a word) the story and he really needs to come clean and I would say apologize about dissing South Palo Alto and his careerism which started at age 14 apparently.

By Vytas M, for the Merc:
“We came into the season with a few goals, but we started checking them off and this was the last one,” said SHP senior Nelson Perla-Ward, who transferred from Palo Alto after his freshman year.

edit to add: my extensive research shows that Josh Stern the insightful Paly sports writer is also Josh Stern lacrosse stud and therefore by deduction Josh Stern freshman lacrosse star at Brown, which also triggers in the Plastic Alto reflux thoughts of the great and recently transferred out of this league Michael Carney of Mill Valley, who preceded Stern for the Bears by about 50 years and coached for many years, I think Tamalpais High and Terry and I met thru Beth Custer and toured his modern art collection. Solange Michael Carney, mazel tov Josh Stern and Jeremy Jeremy cue the Eddie Vedder wail, but I hear my bud and friend of Eddie Jerry Hannan: we have agreed, to a greed. By any means necessary.

and1: this is already hop-scotching more than a Floreal triple-jump but I sussed “Jeremy” lyrics –because it did sort of flash thru my mind — and will stick with the further-step “Society” greed-agreed pun rather than Jeremey spoke in class today But we unleashed a lion even though I was just thinking about the fact that Lin was on the Campanile and basically a columnist covering himself but somehow Harvard pr department then said he was “Editor” of the Campy. I would say “page editor” would have been more accurate. Haters gonna hate, of course.