Photos by Ray Hamill/HumboldtSports.com
By Ray Hamill — It’s been an exciting season so far for the Ferndale Wildcats on the baseball fields, but that’s nothing to what they hope to achieve over the next 17 days.
Heading into the business end of their campaign, the Cats are tied atop the Little 4 standings with St. Bernard’s and hoping to topple one of the greatest local sports dynasties the H-DNL has ever seen.
If they can win their final six conference games, which includes a mouthwatering regular season-ending doubleheader against St. Bernard’s, the Ferndale boys will claim their first conference championship since 2005.
Since that spring, the St. Bernard’s boys have dominated the Little 4, winning 15 of the 16 conference titles.
The South Fork Cubs are the only other team to win a conference title since then, taking home the pennant in 2016.
But this year’s Ferndale team appears well capable of ending that remarkable Crusaders run.
The Wildcats head into a Friday doubleheader at Hoopa with just one loss on the season, and at 10-1-1 they have the most impressive record of any H-DNL team.
Their only loss came at St. Bernard’s earlier this month, when the two Little 4 rivals split a conference doubleheader.
Ferndale’s 10-4 win in game two that day was St. Bernard’s first loss in conference since 2019, a run that included 43 consecutive Little 4 wins.
The Crusaders’ dominating run included 10 straight titles between 2006 and 2015 and they have claimed five more L4 crowns since then.
(There was no Little 4 championship awarded in the COVID years of 2020 and 2021, although St. Bernard’s won all 11 games against their conference opponents in the shortened 2021 season.)
The Wildcats also won a non-conference game against the Crusaders at the St. Bernard’s tournament in early March, giving them a 2-1 record against their biggest nemesis this year.
Their pitching has been very good for most of the spring — both the starters and the bull pen — and they are now starting to build some momentum at the plate.
And if that they continue that, there’s every reason to believe they can end a near two-decade wait for a conference championship.
“If we can (continue to hit the ball well) and shore up our defense a little bit, our pitchers have been doing everything we’ve asked of them,” Ferndale head coach Justin Andersen said after a 10-7 win over Fortuna on Monday. “Things are definitely going in the right direction and we just want to build on that and keep it going.”
After matching up against Hoopa on Friday, the Cats will host South Fork in a pair of conference games next week, before closing out the Little 4 with a pivotal doubleheader at home against St. Bernard’s on May 3.
