Submitted photo – The Hoopa Warriors won their first-ever NCS dual meet championship at Eureka High on Saturday.

It was a day that will go down in H-DNL wrestling history as one of the most memorable ever.

On Saturday, the league won a pair of North Coast Section dual meet championships, with the Del Norte Warriors finally getting over the hump in the Division-2 Redwood Empire tournament and the Hoopa Warriors winning the Division-3 tournament, both at Eureka High.

The NCS dual meet championship is the first for both schools and each had to overcome powerhouse programs in their respective finals.

“We finally got it,” said Del Norte heard coach Clinton Schaad, whose team had placed second in the NCS in each of the past four seasons. “It was an exciting day.”

The Del Norte Warriors were seeded No. 2 in their 10-team bracket and won all three of their matches, getting the better of No. 7 San Marin in the quarterfinals (72-11) and No. 3 Windsor in the semifinals (58-21), before edging top seed Ukiah by just two points (35-33) in the final.

It was the fifth straight NCS championships where Del Norte and Ukiah faced each other in the final, with the Wildcats having won the previous four.

“It was a complete team effort, and not just the wrestlers competing,” Schaad said. “The entire squad was cheering us on. It was a complete team effort from top to bottom, from freshman to seniors and coaches, and it was really, really exciting.”

The NCS has been holding the dual meet championships since 2005 and this was just the second and third time an H-DNL school has won a championship, following McKinleyville’s Division-3 win in 2014.

It also gives the H-DNL two of this year’s four NCS dual meet titles.

Like Del Norte, Hoopa also was seeded No. 2 in the D-3 bracket.

The Warriors beat No. 7 Kelseyville in their quarterfinal (60-12) before getting the better of No. 6 Clear Lake in the semifinals (54-27).

In the final, the beat No. 1 Willits, a team that had won four of the previous six NCS titles and a school that had beaten them in last year’s final.

“Last year we dropped some matches that if they had gone the other way we could have won,” Hoopa head coach Merk Robbins said. “And just winning those matches that we needed to win (this year) made the difference.”

It was especially impressive for a Hoopa squad that was missing one of their best grapplers through injury (Kaewett Nelson) and a team that could only compete in 11 of the 14 weight divisions and gave up three forfeits to the Wolverines.

Submitted photo – The Del Norte Warriors celebrate their first-ever section dual meet championship at Eureka on Saturday.

“The whole squad did really well today,” Robbins said. “I’m really proud of the kids. They all did a great job and they were able to come home as NCS champions. It’s pretty awesome.”

Antonio Correa, Donald Hostler, Santiago Moon and Tyler Lewis, among others, all wrestled well on a busy day for the team, as did Vanessa King, one of three girls on the Hoopa team.

“The guys we needed to win by pin to secure the (team) win did their job,” Robbins said. “And that secured victory for us.”

Del Norte, meanwhile, had to overcome adversity on the way to victory, but the Warriors answered the call on the way to the historic victory.

Their match against Ukiah was a back and forth affair, with the Warriors trailing 24-9 at one stage before rallying for the win.

The championship came down to the last match, with Del Norte’s Reynaldo Martinez needing to avoid a loss by pin at 157.

And he did just that to secure the historic breakthrough victory for his school.

The NCS championship was particularly gratifying for the program after the Warriors suffered their first H-DNL dual meet regular-season loss in seven years just last week, when they fell to Arcata.

“We knew we had a chance to win it all, but when we dropped that match to Arcata we weren’t even sure we’d even get in,” said Schaad, whose team received an at-large berth. “We corrected some issues we had in the league dual meets and we came through with the big win today.”

And that was good news not just for Del Norte, but for the H-DNL.

“It’s great to have both section titles come to the H-DNL,” Schaad said. “It speaks of the level of wrestling we have here.”

Arcata and McKinleyville each also were in action at the NCS meet.

The H-DNL champion Tigers were seeded No. 4 in the Division-2 Redwood Empire bracket and beat No. 5 Napa in the quarterfinals (55-18) before falling to Ukiah in a close semifinal (39-37).

McKinleyville was seeded No. 8 in the D-3 bracket and lost a quarterfinal to Willits (45-16).