POWER RANKINGS

Photos by Ray Hamill/HumboldtSports.com – St. Bernard’s Trenten Hagler scored a pair of second-half touchdowns against Heritage over the weekend.

By Ray Hamill — Just three H-DNL football teams remain unbeaten going into week four of the high school football season, and all three feature in this week’s Humboldt Sports Power Rankings.

We see some movement in this week’s rankings, including a new No. 2 and a McKinleyville team that is trending in the right direction for the second straight week.

The Ferndale Wildcats got the weekend action under way with a dominating 27-0 win Santa Ynez on Friday afternoon, although it took them a while to get going.

After a first half that saw little separation between the two schools, the Cats began to pull away in the third quarter on the way to ending the game as a contest long before the final buzzer.

While far from spectacular, head coach Clint McClurg’s team posted its ninth shutout in its last 12 regular season games, and the Cats remain No. 1 in our Power Rankings after a dominating defensive performance.

Through their opening two games, the Cats have allowed just one touchdown.

St. Bernard’s, meanwhile, moves up one spot to No. 2 in this week’s rankings after a very impressive win over Division-1 Heritage and a performance that will have some local fans believing they could be the best team in the H-DNL right now.

Back-to-back wins over quality opponents augurs well for the Crusaders, who leapfrog Fortuna after the Huskies lost to Ukiah on Friday night.

It should be an intriguing battle for this year’s Pacific League championship when league play begins later in the year, with SB and Fortuna looking like the frontrunners right now.

The Huskies racked up over 300 yards rushing in their loss to the Wildcats and they remain one of the best teams in the H-DNL.

Interestingly, as of Tuesday afternoon, Fortuna is the top-ranked H-DNL team in the NCS, but the MaxPreps computers have the Huskies at 3-0 instead of 2-1, which is obviously a mistake on their part.

And because of that, the Huskies are ranked No. 15 in the section.

St. Bernard’s is now the second-highest ranked local team at No. 17, followed by Ferndale at No. 25.

The Cats dropped four spots in this week’s NCS rankings despite their big win over Santa Ynez.

The McKinleyville Panthers, meanwhile, are the next highest ranked local team, both in the Humboldt Sports Power Rankings and in the MaxPreps NCS rankings.

After breaking into our Power Rankings at No. 5 last week, head coach Jason Benge’s team moves up one more spot to No. 4 this week.

They also moved up 14 spots in the NCS rankings to No. 42 overall.

After that, however, there is a sizable gap for the H-DNL teams, with No. 69 Eureka one spot ahead of No. 70 Del Norte, followed by No. 83 Hoopa and No. 85 Arcata.

After dropping their first three games of the season for the first time since 2010, the Del Norte Warriors drop to No. 5 in our Power rankings.

Eureka, which ended an 11-game losing streak in thrilling fashion with a come-from-behind win over Marshfield over the weekend, remains on the bubble.