By Ray Hamill — The Huskies will be hoping to avoid another slow start to the football season this fall, but they’ll have their hands full in their season opener on Friday night.
In this week’s Game of the Week here on the North Coast, Fortuna opens against St. Helena at Husky Field on Friday night in a showdown between two teams that went deep in the playoffs a year ago.
After opening last season with three straight losses and four in their first six games — including a 28-18 defeat at St. Helena on opening weekend — the Huskies closed out strong and made it all the way a North Coast Section championship game.
This fall, head coach Mike Benbow and his players will be eager to hit the ground running and come out of the starting gates faster, but they will be tested early against a competitive Saints program that won 11 of its 12 games last year.
Both St. Helena and Fortuna lost to eventual state champion Bishop O’Dowd in last year’s postseason.
“They made a deep run last year too,” Benbow said of St. Helena. “But we feel really good about our game plan, so we’ll see. It’s two playoff teams (from last year) and we expect a battle.”
The Huskies, who are the defending co-champs of the Pacific Conference (formerly the Big 4), certainly appear to have the experience to enjoy another successful campaign, even if they lack depth.
Starting quarterback Will Shaw is back for one more year at the high school level and he looks poised to close out his Huskies career strong, along with five returning starters in the trenches.
Juniors Noah Wall and Greg Fitzgerald are back at offensive tackles, as are senior guard Aaron Thurston and junior guard Kingston Natt.
Last year’s fifth offensive line starter, junior Braden Timmerman, is also back but is switching to tight end this fall, while sophomore standout Reed Harrington has moved up to the varsity team and will start at center.
And that gives Benbow and his quarterback an experienced group in the trenches.
“We have a lot of experience up there, which is really good,” the longtime head coach said.
However, the big question for the Huskies this season is how effective a new-look group of skilled position players can be.
Last year the Huskies had arguably the top two running backs in the H-DNL — Mako Limon and Kavi Bolden — each of whom will play at College of the Redwoods this year, and replacing them won’t be easy.
Bolden’s younger brother, junior Tiki Bolden, is expected to help fill that void as he steps into a bigger role, along with versatile Easton Essig, who appears to have a bright future with the team.
The coaches are particularly excited about Essig, who will play running back and receiver and will also serve as Shaw’s back-up.
However, with just 21 players on the the varsity roster, the Huskies are not particularly deep and avoiding a lot of injuries could be key if they are to successfully defend the conference championship they shared with St. Bernard’s a year ago.
Benbow does have a large JV roster of 35 and we may see some of those young guns transition to the varsity team as the season progresses.
The players got their live taste of action at last weekend’s H-DNL jamboree and Benbow liked a lot of what he saw.
“I think the jamboree went really well for us,” he said. “We found out quite a bit about our team. We like where we are right now.
“If we stay healthy we’ll be fine.”
Benbow and his staff of assistants have been working closely with the players for much of the last month and the coaches have been impressed with what they’ve seen.
“What I like is they’re just a bunch of workers,” Benbow said. “They all compete, and it’s a really nice group of young men.
“They come out, they work hard, they want to be coached, and they’re all starting to jell together.”
Friday night’s game kicks off at 7 p.m., with the schools’ JV teams taking the field at 5 p.m.
