Ray Hamill/HumboldtSports.com
By Ray Hamill — The 2023/24 high school sports year officially ended for local schools on Thursday when the Ferndale Wildcats bowed out of the NorCal baseball playoffs.
An exciting year served up plenty of thrills and excitement and lots of success for the H-DNL teams.
And with that in mind, Humboldt Sports will be naming our high school athletes, team and coach of the year later this month.
Of course, all the high school sports will return with a bang in just three months time, including the football season which is now just 90 days away.
And opening weekend should be fun with three all-local matchups scheduled, including a Thursday night showdown in Hoopa.
After a preseason scrimmage at St. Bernard’s on Aug. 24, the H-DNL teams will turn their attention to opening weekend, which gets under way just five days later.
Opening night is on Aug. 29 and sees St. Bernard’s travel to Hoopa for a Thursday night showdown.
That should be a good test for the Warriors and first-year varsity head coach Curtis Kane, going up against Matt Tomlin’s team, which won a share of the 2023 Big 4 championship for the first time in school history.
Five more H-DNL teams will be in action the following night, on Aug. 30, which includes two more all-local games.
New Eureka head coach Sam Edmunds will be in charge when the Loggers play Arcata, as they try to put a disappointing 2023 season behind them.
The Tigers are the defending Little 4 champions and will likely challenge for the conference crown again with so many of their star players coming back, including conference MVPs Luke Lemke and Dayquan Dunn.
Their opening game against Eureka should be a good one.
Also on that Friday night, the Del Norte Warriors will travel to play the Huskies under the lights in Fortuna, which could be the pick of the opening weekend games.
Both teams are perennial Big 4 contenders and were co-champs last year along with the Crusaders.
And rounding out that Friday night’s games, the McKinleyville Panthers will travel to play Kelseyville in Lake County.
Last season was a tough one for the Panthers, who barely had enough players to field a team most weekends.
But this year should be better, with several JV players expected to step up to the varsity level.
The Ferndale Wildcats, meanwhile, will close out a busy weekend for the local schools when they host Fort Bragg on Saturday afternoon.
The defending state champions will look to challenge Arcata for the L4 championship this year with a core group of talented sophomores expected back after a historic end to the 2023 season.
The South Fork Cubs will have a bye on opening weekend, before kicking off their season at Fort Bragg on Sept. 6.
Categories: Arcata, Del Norte, Eureka, Ferndale, Football, Fortuna, Hoopa Valley, McKinleyville, South Fork, St. Bernard's
Little 4 should still be the Little 4.
Big 5 should still be the Big 5.
Ridiculous and continues to be unfair for the student athletes. Arcata in the Little 4, come on! Tigers are proud of winning the Little 4, sheesh, a school of over 1,000 students competing against schools of 130-230!
Big 5 are schools of close to or over 1,000, Little 4 should be the schools of 100-300, end of story.
It’s much better for the players to play against competitive teams. HDN has done a good job of making sure this happens in my opinion. Bill wants St B to dominate the lesser HDN schools instead of playing teams that they are competitive with that isn’t good for anyone.
You should probably Do a little fact checking Bill St Bernard’s is a school of less than 200 and thy play in the big 4! Don’t assume things when it says tight in the article that st Bernard’s is in the big 4. With fortuna , Del Norte , Eureka , and Mck
Put them all in one conference . Then they al play each other onetime . With the playoffs structured how they are now the teams will be seeded and placed in their proper divisions and then the north coast teams will be all representative of one conference . Yes thre will be only one conference title but playing rubber competition In league will make you better for playoffs . And imagine having four or five teams from the north coast go to playoffs and win their division. And then go to state that would revitalize that powerhouse football is on the north coast .