Straight from the Sports Desk

In the past week, two of the high school hoops games that I have covered involved overtime or last-second heroics. By now (unless you're not a prep basketball fan or you have been out of town — in either case, thanks for checking out this blog) you've read or heard about Arcata's 58-56 OT win over Eureka last Friday, Jan. 11. Even though many people have focused on the high drama of the 4th quarter or OT, I found it to be a thrilling game from the beginning, with guys on both teams besides A & B (Allen & Bianco) stepping up to make great individual efforts. And up in Hoopa Valley on Tuesday, Jan.15, the women Warriors were up by seven in the final minutes but started turning over the ball while St. B's kept hitting their shots. Still, it was stunning when Redner's off-balance turnaround shot in the paint won the game 53-52. On my way back to the coast I was thankful that highways 96 and 299 were clear and dry with not much valley fog, so I could think about my story while I was driving. Two weeks ago it was rainy, windy and cold on my evening trip back and forth to the Valley, and I really had to pay attention to the road.

Posted by Neil Tarpey at 05:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

It was a difficult challenge for our four sports writers to narrow down the 12 top local sports stories of 2007.
One athlete whom we considered —but was not selected— was Del Norte High's Kelsey Hintz.
In the spring at the all-county track tourney held at Fortuna, Kelsey set the all-time H-DNC pole vault mark of 12-6. Earlier that day she had won the 100-meter dash and also pole-vaulted 12-4 —breaking her 12-3 mark from 2006 meet. Other athletes (Nina Carson, Mallorie Franco, Bailee McCulloch, Alana Nulph, Skyler Rice and Jack Lamb) at that meet each won at least two white stars, but setting any all-time positive mark deserves some recognition ... so this blog wants to acknowledge Hintz's vault.

Posted by Neil Tarpey at 12:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Perhaps lost among the Wildcats 9 shutouts in 13 games this year is the fact that Ferndale has an enrollment of 163 students ... by comparison, St. Pat's/St. Vincent — whom the Wildcats shutout for the Class A title — has an enrollment of 663 ... that 500 more students than Ferndale, so way more potential football players ...
In fact, no other Class A football team has less than 400 students (e.g., Sacred Heart: 471, Salesian: 587), so it emphasizes even more the high-quality of Kim Jorgensen's 2-way football players.

(These enrollment stats were from the NCS 2007-08 Football Classifications sheet, effective 6/1/07.)

Posted by Neil Tarpey at 04:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)