By Ray Hamill — With the new high school sports year getting under way, the H-DNL has announced some big changes for the league.
Beginning this fall, the Big 5 and Little 4 will have new names as league officials look for ways to better represent the two longtime leagues.
For a long time, the two conferences were split according to school size and it remained that way for every sport.
The five league schools with the largest enrollment — Eureka, Arcata, Del Norte Fortuna and McKinleyville — competed in the Big 5, and the smaller schools — Hoopa, South Fork, St. Bernard’s and Ferndale — competed in the Little 4, along with Northcoast Prep and Southern Trinity from time to time.
But with the North Coast Section focusing more and more on competitive equity in recent years, the landscape of local high school sports has undergone a lot of changes.
Those changes have resulted in a shakeup of the conference teams in many sports, such as St. Bernard’s competing with the bigger schools in football and Del Norte competing alongside the smaller schools in girls soccer.
This year, the league athletic directors and school administrators began looking into the possibility of changing the conference names to better reflect the makeup of the league.
The HDN Student Athletic Advisory Council (SAAC), which is made up of two student-athlete representatives from all of the league schools, was asked for input and forwarded some possible new names for consideration.
At the final league meeting of the 2025/25 school year, league officials voted unanimously to rename the Big 5 as the Pacific League and the Little 4 as the Redwood League.
The new names will take effect immediately.
Other names that were considered were the Lost Coast and North Coast conferences, as well as HDN1 and HDN2.
