File photo – The Del Norte Warriors

By Ray Hamill — Six of the nine local high school varsity teams were in action on Friday night, including one game that was delayed by 90 minutes because of lightning in the area.

At Fortuna High School, the Ferndale Wildcats welcomed neighbors and rivals, the Ferndale Wildcats, to Husky Field for the highly-anticipated annual Milk Can game.

And when the game finally kicked off at 9 p.m after the lengthy weather delay, it was the visitors who cruised to a dominating 49-0 win to retain the Milk Can and bragging rights for another year.

With the win, Ferndale improved to 3-0, while Fortuna dropped to 0-3. 

Also in action on Friday night, the St. Bernard’s Crusaders traveled to Santa Rosa to play Montgomery and remained perfect on the season with another big win.

SB scored 37 unanswered points in the first half on the way to a 51-16 victory.

The SB JVs also won their game by a score of 35-8 and the two Crusaders teams are now a combined 8-0 as they each get set for their conference openers in two weeks.

The Del Norte Warriors showcased just how impressive their senior leadership is right now with a big response after losing at Arcata last week.

According to head coach Darren LaFazio, the team captains took over the team this week and “did a really good job of being team leaders.”

“I was proud of them. I was proud of the whole team,” LaFazio said after the Warriors’ dominating 42-8 win at Skyline High in Oakland.

The Warriors improved to 3-1.

The South Fork Cubs were also in action, hosting one of the hottest teams in all of California one week after a blowout victory over Happy Camp.

Hayfork headed to Southern Humboldt riding a remarkable 28-game winning streak and stretched that to 29 with a 68-8 win.

“I felt like we played just as good as we did last weekend, we just ran into a well-coached, quality football team,” South Fork head coach Brandon Coborn said. “This game was the wake-up call the group needed. We will grow from tonight.”

John Stafslien scored the only TD of the night for the Cubs, who dropped to 1-1.

And rounding out a busy night for the local schools, McKinleyville traveled to Redding to play University Prep and lost 41-13 with 155 yards in penalties proving to be too much to overcome.

With the loss, the Panthers dropped to 1-2.

The Mack JVs, meanwhile, won their matchup 26-0 and improved to 2-1.

A busy weekend of local high school football action continues with three more games on Saturday.

Eureka plays at Novato at 2 p.m, while Arcata hosts St. Vincent de Paul at 7 p.m. and Hoopa hosts Trinity at 7:30 p.m.