Photos by Ray Hamill/HumboldtSports.com – The Del Norte Warriors
By Ray Hamill — The No. 1 team in the early-season Humboldt Sports Power Rankings will kick off its season this week.
The Ferndale Wildcats, who had a bye last week, will kick of the new campaign at Fort Bragg on Friday night.
Big things are expected out of the Cats this fall after returning the majority of their players from a young squad that shared last year’s Little 4 championship with eventual state champs Arcata.
Fort Bragg is coming off a 28-6 loss at McKinleyville in a game in which they were comfortably outclassed, but the Timberwolves have a valuable game under their belts and should be a tougher prospect in their home opener.
There were few real surprises on opening weekend, resulting in few changes to our Power Rankings.
The Cats remain No. 1 and Del Norte hold steady at No. 2 after a comfortable albeit it uninspiring win over Hoopa.
That game was marred by too many silly penalties and mistakes, but we expect Del Norte to learn from it and continue to improve, much as the Warriors always do.
The biggest movers of the week are the Eureka Loggers, who scored eight touchdowns in a 56-32 win over Arcata in their opener.
The Loggers make the move from No. 5 to No. 3 and appear to be legitimate contenders in what looks like it could be a wide-open Big 4 this fall.
St. Bernard’s also opened with a nice win — comfortably defeating Clear Lake 30-6 — and are tied with the Loggers at No. 3, the same position they held last week.
And rounding out the top five are the Fortuna Huskies who lost on the road at St. Helena, 28-18, but showed some promise, most notably with their running game.
The Crusaders in action against Clear Lake last weekend.
POWER RANKINGS
1 — Ferndale (0-0)
Wildcats open their season at Fort Bragg this week
2 — Del Norte (1-0)
It was sloppy at times, but the Warriors comfortably won their opener
3T — St. Bernard’s (1-0)
The Crusaders also impressed in their opener against Clear Lake
3T — Eureka (1-0)
The Loggers scored eight touchdowns in their opener at Arcata
5 — Fortuna (0-1)
There were a lot of positives for the Huskies despite their loss at St. Helena
Categories: Del Norte, Eureka, Ferndale, Football, Fortuna, McKinleyville, St. Bernard's
I’m sorry but the polls and the leagues are a joke these days.
You have the Arcata Tigers who won state and have an enrollment equal to Eureka and Del Norte but they are still in the Little 4!!
You have SB with an enrollment more equal to Hoopa and Ferndale, but they play in the Big 4!
That is ridiculous.
These St B guys never stop. St B cherry picked for years in the little 4 now they are where they belong competition wise and it’s obvious the fans would rather hillbilly stomp weaker teams and collect useless titles instead of compete with teams they are comparable to. I’m a huge fan of Tomlin and he competes at every sport he coaches. The athletes at St B are learning way more life skills by playing competitive teams than they would steamrolling weak ones.