Photos by Ray Hamill/HumboldtSports.com
By Ray Hamill — In what was another fun and exciting year of high school sports here on the North Coast, there was no shortage of strong contenders for the 2025/26 Humboldt Sports Team of the Year award.
The Ferndale girls enjoyed their best ever season on the soccer field, cruising to a league title and following that with a first-ever North Coast Section Division-1 championship, while the winter saw multiple H-DNL basketball teams enjoy memorable and successful campaigns, including the Arcata girls, the St. Bernard’s boys, the McKinleyville boys and the NCS champion Eureka boys.
On the wrestling mats, last year’s Humboldt Sports Team of the Year, the Del Norte Warriors, continued to set a blistering standard with an eighth straight league title, while the Del Norte girls took home a first-ever league title in H-DNL golf.
It was also a memorable year for teams like Eureka volleyball, Eureka track and field, McKinleyville and St. Bernard’s baseball, and Fortuna girls cross country, among many many others.
But when it came to deciding who walks away with the coveted Humboldt Sports Team of the Year award, there was really only one serious contender.
From the opening kickoff of the high school football season, the Ferndale Wildcats began to set a blistering pace and they only grew stronger as the fall progressed, capturing the attention of the North Coast sports community — and well beyond — like few teams ever do.
Under the guidance of head coach Clint McClurg and his staff, and led by Humboldt Sports Football co-players of the year, Tanner Pidgeon, Prescott Langer and Ethan Weitzel, no other team in the area came close to stopping the Cats.
They didn’t just dominate schools several times their size, they completely overwhelmed them, even with a majority of backups on the field by early in the second half of most games.
The Cats racked up an incredible 647 points in their 10 regular season games, while holding their opponents to 18 points combined, including posting shutouts in their first eight games.
After a perfect 10-0 record in the regular season, including a 6-0 mark in the Little 4, Ferndale would win three more North Coast Section games on the way to clinching a Division-5 championship.
The tradition of winning at Ferndale High is nothing new, and despite being the smallest school in the section to play 11-player football the Wildcats are the most successful public school program in NCS history.
After beating perennial powerhouse St. Vincent de Paul in the NCS final by a score of 26-14, they did eventually suffer a first defeat at the hands of Sutter in the NorCal bowl game, but that doesn’t take from what was an incredible season for the Ferndale Wildcats as they continued to make their small community proud and represent the area as well as any other program in the H-DNL sports.
And all of that makes them our choice for Humboldt Sports High School Team of the Year for the second time in three years.
This is the third end-of-year award for the Cats, who also won Little 4 Boys co-Athlete of the Year (Tanner Pidgeon) and L4 Girls Athlete of the Year (Tinnley Pidgeon).
We will name our 2026 High School Coach of the Year on Friday.
Congratulations to the Ferndale Wildcats and indeed to all of this year’s finalists for the award, and as always a big thank you to our award sponsors, Bode Construction and Mendes Supply Company.
