Ray Hamill/HumboldtSports.com

By Ray Hamill — It was a rocky start to a new era for the Hoopa Warriors on Saturday, but the rest of the H-DNL stepped up to help out and help prepare them for the upcoming football season.

First-year Hoopa head coach Tashone Rice and his players had to overcome the sort of adversity you can’t possibly plan for in their first live action of the season, when the team bus broke down on the way to the league’s annual preseason jamboree at McKinleyville High School on Saturday.

But the Hoopa parents picked up the players and drove them to the coast.

The Warriors showed up 45 minutes late for the 10 a.m. jamboree, but the rest of the league coaches readjusted their schedules for the day in order to ensure the Hoopa players were able to participate in their four scrimmages.

And that did not go unnoticed by Rice and his players.

“We’re super appreciative of the coaches for working around us. It was awesome,” Rice said. “They worked around us and allowed us to get our reps in (despite being late). And our maintenance staff dealing with the bus breakdown, and the parents who came out and picked up our students. We were persevering all day.”

The rearranged schedule meant the Warriors had to play all of their scrimmages in a shorter time frame, which put added pressure on a small Hoopa roster that included just 11 eligible varsity players.

Rice expects to have around 18 players on this year’s varsity roster, but just 11 of them had completed the mandatory 10 days of practice before the jamboree.

And that meant he he had to call up some JV players for the jamboree, which led to a very busy day for a handful of the youngsters who completed in both the varsity and JV scrimmages.

But it was a good experience for the Hoopa players, who open the season at Trinity on Friday night.

“I thought it went pretty good,” Rice said. “And I thought the players did really good with getting little rest. I thought we did pretty good overall.”