By Ray Hamill — Since lifting the coveted trophy back in February, the Dick Niclai Tournament champs have been succeeding off the court as much as they did on it.
Five of the seven seniors on this year’s Arcata girls basketball team are taking their talents to the college courts, with Syriah George the most recent to sign her letter of intent after committing her future to College of Marin.
She follows in the footsteps of teammates Tae and Mae Wolford (Sierra College), Izzy Allen (Gogebic College) and Mia Cueto (San Diego Mesa).
And George won’t be alone.
She joins a Mariners program that has a strong tradition of recruiting players from the North Coast and a team that will feature five former H-DNL players next winter, including George’s former teammate, McKinleyville’s Ahty Allen, who signed her letter of intent to play there this spring.
Ferndale’s Michaela Ellsmore has also committed her future to the program, while former Del Norte Warrior Brooklyn Carter and former Ferndale Wildcat Emily Sauers will be sophomores at Marin next year.
George has been on the Mariners’ radar for some time and head coach Emily Schaefer believes she can have a big impact at the JC level.
“She’s one of those players who is going to work incredibly hard and has a huge desire to improve,” Schaefer said. “She has an incredible upside and I’m looking forward to working with her.”
Schaefer believes that with her work ethic and approach to the game, George will perfectly fit the team culture she is trying to build at Marin.
Just as important, all of the local players who have taken their talents to Marin in recent years — a group that also includes McKinleyville’s Victoria Claros, Bella Turner and Kayley Armstrong, St. Bernard’s Mataya Sherman and Fortuna’s Isobel Crosswhite — have thrived there, with Crosswhite and Sherman both then taking their talents to four-year programs.
“(The area) continues to produce talented, hard-working student-athletes and they understand what it takes to compete at a high level,” Schaefer said.
For George, the decision to join the Mariners was a relatively easy one.
“Coach Emily reached out to me and I guess she was looking at me for a while, and I went and visited, and it was pretty nice,” she said. “I watched them play at CR and they were fun to watch. Their playing style is fun.”
George certainly left her mark on the local high school courts, playing a key role inside for the Tigers on their march to a Big 5 and Dick Niclai Tournament championship double this past winter.
She previously played two years at McKinleyville High, before transferring to Arcata before her junior season and helping the Tigers win back-to-back conference championships.
While she didn’t feature as much as she would have liked at Arcata, she says the experience was an enjoyable one nonetheless and she also got to enjoy plenty of of success with the team.
“It was pretty chill,” she said. “I didn’t play as much as I did at McKinleyville, but it was fun. The team dynamic was fun. Everybody got along.”
The highlight of her two years playing for Arcata came on a Friday night in February of this year, when the Tigers ended an eight-year wait for another Niclai title with a hard-fought victory over Big 5 rival Eureka.
That victory came one year after a heartbreaking loss to St. Bernard’s in the 2025 championship showdown.
“I think the Niclai game was pretty big for us,” George said.
While the Arcata graduate is taking her talents to the college basketball courts, the sport is far from the only one she has enjoyed in high school.
A busy George competed in six sports over the last four years, including two years of volleyball, one season of softball, three years in track and field, one in wrestling and one on the soccer fields.
She says she briefly considered competing in track or perhaps soccer in college, but basketball has been the one consistent in her sports career ever since she began playing the sport “when I was very little,” she said.
And as she gets set for an exciting new chapter in her life and sports career, George expressed her gratitude to some of the people who have influenced her along the way.
“Thanks to all my coaches for pushing me and getting me to where I am today,” she said.
George will major in Radiology.
