Photos by Daniel Burshem – Action from the Battle at the Border tournament in Del Norte earlier his season.
By Ray Hamill — The defending league champs look like the team to beat once again in this year’s H-DNL.
Last weekend, the Del Norte boys traveled to compete at the prestigious Lou Bronson wrestling tournament at Liberty High School and enjoyed a statement performance that will have their league opponents on alert.
And that’s not all.
The Del Norte girls team also is making some noise as the season begins to heat up with another big showing for the Warriors at the Brittney David tournament, also at Liberty High.
The boys placed third overall at the 75-team event, as they get set to open their league campaign.
“They wrestled really well,” head coach Clinton Schaad said of both teams. “It’s hard to complain about being third, but you always want to win (all your) matches. But it was a pretty good start to the new year.”
The Del Norte boys had five wrestlers place at the big tournament, led by junior standout Curtis Bartley, who placed first in the 138-pound division out of 64 wrestlers in the bracket.
Sophomore teammate Chulhs Bates also had a big weekend and placed second at 106 pounds, while junior Colton Schaad finished third at 175.
All three are currently ranked in the top 40 in the state in their weight divisions.
Rounding out a successful weekend, Alex Osborne placed seventh at 1134 and James Gensaw Jr. was eighth at 132.
In the girls tournament, senior Channey Schaad led the team with a fourth-place finish in her bracket.
“It was a good tournament overall,” Clinton Schaad said. “Everybody won matches.”
The longtime head coach and his grapplers are beginning to build momentum as they look to win another H-DNL dual meet championship in 2024 and hopefully carry that into the North Coast Section dual meet championships.
Photos by Daniel Burshem
The Warriors, who are among the most consistent sports programs in the entire H-DNL, will also be hoping to end a streak of four consecutive second-place finishes at the section dual meet championships, where they have finished behind Ukiah all four times.
They were originally scheduled to open league competition against McKinleyville this week, but that dual meet was postponed to the end of the month.
They will take this weekend off from competition and enjoy a team-bonding trip to Oregon to take in the Division-1 matchup between Oregon State and Penn State, before returning to the mats next week.
The Warriors are scheduled to face off against Hoopa on Wednesday in a non-league dual meet in what should be a competitive night against a quality Hoopa team.
“It’ll be good for us,” Clinton Schaad said. “Hoopa’s tough.”
Photos by Daniel Burshem
This year’s Del Norte team features a large group of returners from last season’s league championship team and they are beginning to build momentum at the right time as they look to peak for the postseason in a few weeks.
“They’re all wrestling really good right now,” the head coach added. “We’re not peaking yet. We’r trying to stay healthy and injury free, and we want to be wrestling our best in late January. You don’t want to peak too early.”
After clinching a girls league title two years ago, the Warriors were denied a second straight championship by Eureka last year, but the head coach believes his roster of eight girls can compete for the pennant once again in 2024.
“It’ll be close,” Clinton Schaad said.
The 2024 league championships and the NCS dual meet tournaments will be hosted by Eureka in February.
