Calistoga High football fans have long needed a GPS to track which league the program was headed. Depending on one’s outlook, the Wildcats might actually get to stay in one place for the foreseeable future. The question becomes, is 8-man football what they covet or do they accept it as reality of their situation?
Here’s the primer for the paint:
If you count the upcoming season in 2016, Calistoga has been smack-dab in the middle of a league realignment seven times in 17 seasons since 1994. The Wildcats most recent change came after 2014. The North Central League II dissolved with St. Vincent (Petaluma) joining the Bay Football League and Calistoga, Tomales and Upper Lake joining the NCL III (8-man football). Calistoga had little trouble adapting to the change in head coach Mike Ervin’s return to the program. The Wildcats went 6-2. Ervin coached Calistoga from 2006-2010 before giving way to Paul Harrell, who resigned after 2014.
After the the 2014 season ended, Calistoga to be moved to the NCL III with Tomales and Upper Lake also making the same move. St. Vincent (Petaluma) moved to the Bay Football League but in 2016 will compete in NCL I, just for football. St. Vincent competed in that league from 2005 to 2010, but the only sticking point is that the NCL I would have an odd number of teams (nine).
In 2014, Calistoga had to forfeit its last four JV football games because of academic ineligibility severely limiting the team. Tomales had no JV team because there were only 14 kids in the entire football program. Upper Lake and St. Vincent each had JV teams but the former had to pull up three players from the JV team to have 11 players on varsity.
Then Calistoga High athletic director D.J. Hein said at the time that the premise of the move at the time was eligibility based but made sense based on enrollment.
OK, the primer is dry, time for the paint:
The NCL III consists of Anderson Valley, Rincon Valley Christian, Laytonville, Round Valley, Potter Valley, Point Arena and Mendocino to go along with the addition of Calistoga, Tomales and Upper Lake.
In the past, Calistoga football had the option from game to game of playing 9-man or 11-man football. That option ended the year Harrell took over for Mike Ervin in 2011.
Other factors have also contributed to hastening Calistoga’s move to the NCL III in that Div. V in the CIF North Coast Section became much more loaded with the addition of Middletown, Salesian (Richmond), John Swett (Crockett), St. Helena and St. Patrick’s (Vallejo), to name a few. Some of those schools have enrollments of 500 and change.
The permanency of being in a league for an extended period of time would be new, and perhaps welcome, for Calistoga.
Calistoga, however, is in that ‘tweener stage. The Wildcats would get housed on a regular basis in the NCL I but the NCL III is too limiting on a long-term basis. On a given year, Calistoga has enough numbers to fill a JV and varsity team but the rest of the NCL III with the exception of Upper Lake does not have that luxury. In a recent e-mail, Ervin told me that last season the Wildcats had enough players for two teams. The problem was, there were no games to play so as a result, the JV kids’ best playing time was after the varsity youngsters contributed to building big leads.
However, given the overall decline in football participation throughout the United States, Calistoga football remaining in the NCL III for 8-man football is not such a far-fetched notion.
The only viable option if Calistoga wants to return to 11-man football is the BFL, where the Wildcats competed in 2012 and 2013.
It’s just a matter of how much do the Wildcats covet a return to 11-man football.
No comments:
Post a Comment