By Ray Hamill — A Halloween afternoon Milk Can showdown highlights this week’s local high school football schedule, as two of the top teams in the H-DNL get set to face off.
This year’s matchup between the Wildcats and Fortuna Huskies will take place at Ferndale, as the home team looks to respond to a first regular-season loss in two years this past weekend.
The Cats traveled to McKinleyville and fell 32-29, dropping to 7-1 on the season.
The Huskies, meanwhile, won 41-14 at Eureka this past weekend and have won five straight games to go to 7-1.
And head coach Mike Benbow and his players will carry plenty of momentum into one of their most important games of the season.
Game time on Saturday is set for 2 p.m.
Also on Saturday, the South Fork Cubs will try to keep rolling when they travel to play Branson in eight-player football.
The Cubs are 6-2 after a 56-0 win at Swett over the weekend, which was a nice response for a team that got blown out against Priory the previous weekend.
Branson, however, will present a tough challenge for the Miranda school and is 7-0 after a 69-16 win at Elsie Allen on Friday.
Six other local varsity teams will be in action on Friday night.
St. Bernard’s (6-2) travels to Arcata (1-7), McKinleyville (6-2) plays at Del Norte (3-5) and Eureka (2-6) plays at Hoopa (1-7).
All of those games are scheduled for 7:30 p.m.
The most intriguing matchup of the night will take place in Crescent City.
The host Warriors are coming off a disappointing showing at St. Bernard’s this past weekend, where they fell 46-12 to their league rivals in a game that got away from them early.
Conversely the Panthers are coming off one of their biggest wins in recent memory after a thrilling comeback victory over a previously unbeaten Ferndale team.
Head coach Jason Benge and his players, who are enjoying a breakout season and clinched at least a share of the Redwood League title with their weekend victory, won’t lack confidence heading north on Friday.
The Crusaders, meanwhile, enjoyed arguably their most impressive performance of the season on Saturday and appear to be peaking at the right time now that they have a full complement of players available.
And because of that, the Tigers will have their hands full on Friday, although they will also carry some momentum into the game after recording their first win of the season at Hoopa on Friday.
And rounding out a busy two days for the local teams, Eureka and Hoopa will be eager to get back to winning ways when they face off in what has been a difficult campaign for both programs this far.
