Photos by Ray Hamill/HumboldtSports.com

By Ray Hamill — The best team in the H-DNL this past winter has swept the Humboldt Sports end-of-season basketball awards.

Arcata’s Tae and Mae Wolford have been named our girls co-players of the year after dominating seasons for both, while their head coach Charlie Espinoza is the 2025/26 Humboldt Sports Coach of the Year and the Tigers are our girls team of the year.

With what they achieved together, it’s difficult to argue they weren’t all well deserving of the awards.

As a team, the Tigers remarkably claimed at least a share of the Big 5 championship with three games remaining, something we rarely see in the conference.

They followed that with a first Dick Niclai Tournament championship in eight years and would go on to win their opening game in the North Coast Section Division-1 tournament.

The Tigers closed out with a record of 18-5, including a 7-1 mark in league, and they were clearly the best team in the H-DNL this winter, posting a breakthrough victory over nemesis St. Bernard’s and going 2-1 against Eureka.

In his three years in charge of the team, Espinoza has quickly established himself as one of the best coaches in the area, beating out a quality field of finalists for our coach of the year award, a group that also included the experienced trio of Eureka’s Cliff Napoleon, St. Bernard’s Matt Tomlin and Ferndale’s Chris Ardrey, each of whom also enjoyed plenty of success this past winter.

Espinoza is quickly building a good team culture within the program and appears to be a popular coach for the team.

He clearly cares deeply about his players and it shows.

But that’s not the only thing that separated him from his peers this year.

Espinoza inspires his players and consistently puts them in situations where they can succeed, something we saw first-hand this year with the development of a trio of sophomores — Betty Miles, Colby Eisner and Anevay Gruetzmacher — who should keep the Tigers among the best teams in the H-DNL for the foreseeable future.

And when the chips were down and the pressure mounted— late in a game against St. Bernard’s and in the Niclai final — the players bought in, continued to fight and found a way to win against the odds.

And when all was said and done, that more than anything is what separated the Tigers from their league rivals this year.

And that, more than anything, is what makes Espinoza our choice for coach of the year and the Tigers our choice for team of the year.

Espinoza is also succeeding off the court.

Many of his former players were a part of the successful College of the Redwoods team this year, while five of the seven seniors on this year’s Arcata team will continue their playing careers on the college courts after graduation.

Congratulations to the Arcata coaches and players for their awards.