Photos by Ray Hamill/HumboldtSports.com – Wes Renner (24) and Isaak Kasso (12) are two of the nine Ferndale seniors on this year’s team.
By Ray Hamill — The Ferndale Wildcats are back!
And they can thank a resilient senior class that has persevered for the past four years for helping to get them back to the summit.
After knocking off three higher seeds on the road in back-to-back-to-back playoff games over the last month, the Cats were crowned North Coast Section champions for the first time in 11 years, restoring a winning tradition for the winningest program in H-DNL football history.
And they’re not done yet.
On Friday night, Ferndale will play Portola in the Division 7-AA state playoffs at the Redwood Bowl, with a place in one of this year’s state bowl games up for grabs.
A state championship for the program would be a fitting way for these outstanding seniors to close out their high school careers.
Whether they succeed or not, however, won’t take from what this group of players has achieved, which was particularly impressive considering what they had to endure on the way back to the summit and the manner in which they ended the school’s longest NCS championship drought since the section brought back the postseason tournaments in the mid 70s.
“It’s been a long time, especially for Ferndale,” head coach Clint McClurg said after last weekend’s NCS win, the program’s 14th all-time. “Our seniors right now really, really did turn the corner, and I’m proud of them. I’m really proud of them.”
Considering Ferndale won just two games in each of the past two seasons and the fact the school only sporadically fielded a JV team for the past few years, coming as far as they have is a remarkable achievement.
And of course this year’s senior class played a huge role in that.
“The seniors are leaving their mark on the program, and they kept the program alive,” McClurg added. “We didn’t even have a JV program (in recent years), and they not only won a section championship but they kept this program alive when it was on life support.”
The seniors have battled the odds since they first began playing for Ferndale High in the midst of COVID.
But this group of players never lost faith and continued to show up week after week, and now they’re reaping the rewards of that commendable endurance as they get set to represent the H-DNL in the state playoffs.
Three of the four team captains — Prescott Langer, Tanner Pidgeon and Ethan Weitzel — are still in their sophomore year, but the seniors have most definitely helped set the tone for their younger teammates, and just about all of them have played major roles all season.
It’s also a group that could easily have thrown in the towel after suffering a pair of heartbreaking losses in October to eventual Little 4 champion Arcata, a school that has roughly seven times the student population as that of Ferndale.
But they didn’t.
Levi Dixon is the lone senior captain on the team and battled through injury last week to play a pivotal role in the championship game.
“That guy has the heart of a champion,” McClurg said. “He did whatever he could do to help the team.”
And he wasn’t the only senior to do so.
Players like Trent Titus, Thomas Fergison, Kacey Luster and Andrew Clevenger have all performed at a consistently high level all fall, while Dayton Comer has been Mr. Reliable as a kicker and was so once again last weekend while nailing both of his PATs.
Wes Renner also played a key role, and like Dixon he was willing to do whatever was needed for his team after switching to the defensive line to help contain a dangerous Willits offense in the championship game.
Likewise with Issak Kasso and Cade Angelini, two other senior players who were willing to do whatever was needed to help their team on the way to securing the section crown.
Overall, it’s a senior class that epitomized small town high school football at its best.
“Those guys really did step up,” the head coach said.
They will be looking to do so again on Friday when they take on an undefeated Portola team that is 12-0 after winning a Division-5 Northern Section championship last week.
Friday night’s game is set for 7:30 p.m.
