Ray Hamill/HumboldtSports.pm – The Del Norte Warriors
By Ray Hamill — Seven of the nine H-DNL varsity teams have been included in the North Coast Section football playoff brackets, although only one of them will host in the opening round.
In a surprising move, the Del Norte Warriors were denied the opportunity to host their opener despite a dominating season on their way to a Big 4 championship.
The Warriors received the No. 5 seed in Division 4 and will kick off at No. 4 Tennyson in Hayward on Friday night.
NCS rules award home games to league champions, unless they are drawn against a higher-seeded league champion, which is the case with Tennyson.
This was surprising, however, because Del Norte has been ranked higher than the Lancers all season long, according to MaxPreps, and the two teams closed out the regular season at Nos. 17 and 24 in the NCS, respectively.
Tennyson is 8-2 and Del Norte is 8-1.
Friday’s game is set for 7 p.m., with the winner advancing to play either No. 1 Marin Catholic, the third-ranked team in the entire NCS, or No. 8 Newark Memorial.
Fortuna and St. Bernard’s each also have been included in the playoff brackets, along with McKinleyville, Arcata, Hoopa and South Fork.
The Little 4 champion Panthers received the No. 5 seed in Division 7 and will host No. 4 Willits on Friday night at 7.
Also in Division 7, Hoopa received the No. 8 seed and will play at No. 1 St. Vincent de Paul on Saturday at 1 p.m.
If the Panthers and Warriors should both win, they would play each other in the semifinals the following weekend.
Two local teams were also included in the Division-6 field.
The Panthers will host their playoff opener on Friday night.
Fortuna received the No. 5 seed and will open on the road at No. 4 Pinole Valley on Saturday night at 7, while Arcata is seeded No. 8 and will open at No. 1 Saint Mary’s on Saturday at 1 p.m.
And if they both win they also would face each other in the semifinals.
In Division 5, meanwhile, St. Bernard’s was given the No. 5 seed and will play at No. 4 De Anza on Saturday night at 7.
In the eight-man bracket, the South Fork Cubs are the only local local team to receive a top-four seed in their bracket.
The No. 3 Cubs will kick off their postseason at No. 6 Tomales, which is a league champion, on Friday night at 7.
Categories: Arcata, Del Norte, Football, Fortuna, Hoopa Valley, McKinleyville, South Fork, St. Bernard's
Saint Bernards was seeded number 5 in Division 5 and will be playing at the number 4 seed De Anza High School.
One has to wonder about what sort of representation the Humboldt-Del Norte League had at the NCS seeding meeting, if any. Is the current HDN leadership expressing any type of anger regarding this? Or is the league’s leadership just rolling over like a cheap tart in favor of the Bay Area-based NCS schools? Some sort of protest is needed, and I am not sure current local leadership even cares in the least.
Yep, the NCS is a bunch of colluders… favoring southerly teams over northerly teams due to travel distance…
…its a head-scratcher that H-DNL has not filed suit to get the court to rule on arbitration to the extent that the NCS can’t prejudice team rankings, seeds on the basis of travel distance… which shows up nowhere in NCS policy. As it is, evidence exists to show that DN was considered the better team.
The schools in H-DNL are not looking out for their students, athletes and communities by letting the corrupted NCS commissioners violate the ethics they promised to uphold, which should be a Title 9 violation, but sadly is not.
This is why school sports should be eliminated… and the athletes need to sign-up with an associate league organization to serve the athletes better, with the best intentions for a sport without all the other budgetary constraints from government schools…
…and if the schools want to get paid, then attendence revenue is still there to be had using school facilities no different than how HSU/CPH does it.