Photos by Ray Hamill/HumboldtSports.com – Chris Davis talks to his players during a timeout.

By Ray Hamill — This was one of the toughest calls to make in our six end-of-season awards considering the quality of coaching here on the North Coast right now.

But three or four coaches really stood out this year, including St. Bernard’s Issac Gildea and assistant Pat Shanahan, whose team was the most consistent in the H-DNL all winter, as well as Arcata’s Kellen Maynard, who overcame some key injuries and made a midseason adjustment that paid huge dividends for his squad.

Maynard has quickly established himself as one of the top basketball coaches in the H-DNL in recent years and he had arguably his best season yet this past winter.

But no one closed out the season better than McKinleyville’s Chris Davis, and that makes him our choice for 2023/24 Humboldt Sports Boys Basketball Coach of there Year.

Davis had an immediate impact in the H-DNL in his first year in charge of the smallest school in the Big 5 and his players responded to him as well as any players did to any coach this winter.

Not only did he lead the Panthers to just their third-ever Big 5 championship in boys basketball — an impressive achievement considering the relative size of McKinleyville High School to the rest of the Big 5 schools — but he found a way to do so when the momentum appeared to be slipping away over the second half of the campaign.

One of the most impressive things about this coach this year was the way he found a way to instill a belief in his players when things were going south.

After losing two early-season matchups against McKinleyville, Maynard and the Tigers appeared to have figured them out and cruised to two blowout victories over their biggest rivals late in the regular season.

A fifth matchup between the two schools, however, did not follow the same script, and it was Davis who found a way to lead his team to victory over the Tigers in the North Coast Section quarterfinals, arguably the biggest matchup of the season between two of the best three teams in the area.

And that is what ultimately separated Davis in the race for coach of the year.

Davis found a way to stop an Arcata team that had all the momentum and a team that was at the time playing the best basketball on the North Coast and were recent Dick Niclai champions.

He found a way to get his players to believe they could beat the Tigers, when recent form and the community at large suggested they wouldn’t.

Along with assistant coaches Harlan Lerouix and Noah Wheeler, Davis found a way to get the best out of his players and the Panthers responded in thrilling fashion.

In short, they achieved more with less than another coaching staff and built a self-belief and cohesion within their squad, and that’s what coaching is about.

The best part about the H-DNL right now is how many great young coaches are here, and that points to a bright future for the league and should excite the local basketball community.

Runners-up — Kellen Maynard (Arcata) and Issac Gildea (St. Bernard’s).