By Ray Hamill — The annual Milk Can rivalry is always one of the most anticipated games on the local high school football calendar, but this year it is even more so.
The top two teams in the H-DNL in terms of records will face off at Ferndale High School on Saturday afternoon, when the Wildcats host neighbor Fortuna with Eel River Valley bragging rights up for grabs.
Both teams are 7-1 and have been among the best teams here on the North Coast all season long, and it’s a matchup that local fans have been eyeing since early in the season.
But much like any rivalry game, it’s also a matchup that could go either way in any given year.
Over the past 20 years, each school has won exactly 10 Milk Cans each.
The Wildcats have enjoyed the better of the recent matchups and will be playing for a third straight win over their biggest rivals and a fourth in five years.
But the Huskies won six straight between 2013 and 2018 and eight of nine up to 2021.
Before that, it was the Wildcats who had dominated proceedings, taking eight of nine matchups between 2004 (when MaxPreps began keeping records) and 2012.
So who has the advantage this year?
Well, as always, it’s difficult say.
The Huskies are the hottest team in the H-DNL right now and head coach Mike Benbow’s squad has won five straight games, with their only loss coming against a very good Ukiah team (8-1) back in week three.
But the Wildcats have been equally impressive this fall and their only loss came on a late field goal at McKinleyville last weekend, in a game in which they did not play their best football and committed five turnovers.
The big question coming into this weekend is how will the Ferndale players respond to that disappointment and can they get their season back on track?
Whether last week’s loss serves as extra motivation for the Wildcats remains to be seen, although Ferndale head coach Clint McClurg suggested his players don’t need any extra motivation when it comes to the Milk Can.
“You don’t need anything extra for this one” he said. “It’s just a classic football game over a can.”
Both schools also feature some of the best coaching on the North Coast right now and a pair of head coaches that have won state championships in the past decade — Benbow and Fortuna in 2017 and McClurg and the Wildcats in 2023.
Both programs are also expected to receive high seeds for this year’s North Coast Section playoffs and to compete for a section crown and perhaps more.
If recent local football history has taught us anything, it’s that any H-DNL team that wins a section championship has an excellent chance (statistically speaking) of going on to win a state title
In the past 12 years, five of the eight H-DNL teams that qualified for the state playoffs have gone on to win a state title — St. Bernard’s in 2015 and 2019, Fortuna in 2017, Ferndale in 2023 and Arcata in 2024.
A loss for either team on Saturday would likely not take them out of a high seed in their NCS brackets in two weeks, but a loss for the Cats could deny them a No. 1 seed in Division 5 and hand it instead to St. Bernard’s, so Crusaders fans may be cheering for Fortuna this weekend.
Either way, it should be a fascinating showdown between two programs that know each other well — on and off the field — and two coaching staffs that have faced each other often enough to know the other’s tendencies about as well as anyone.
Game time is set for 2 p.m.
