KELSEYVILLE >> If you think the winter rainfall of 2016-17 was something, it paled in comparison to the orange and black reign of 2016-17.
Kelseyville didn’t exactly come out of nowhere during the recently completed high school sports season, but the school’s August-to-May string of successes, one after another, certainly ranks among the more impressive runs by a county school in a single season in some time.
By the numbers, the Knights have added 11 varsity league pennants to their gym rafters in the last two seasons alone. After capturing some share of a championship in boys soccer, volleyball, boys cross country, girls basketball and baseball during the 2015-16 sports season, Kelseyville did one better in 2016-17. The boys soccer, volleyball, girls basketball and baseball squads all repeated as NCL I champions while the boys basketball and softball teams also came away with pennants.
Winning one more title wasn’t the only thing that made 2016-17 so special. It was the dominating fashion with which the Knights won most of their league championships. Three of the six league winners went undefeated — boys soccer (11-0-3), volleyball (14-0) and baseball (14-0) — while two others — boys basketball (13-1) and softball (13-1) — lost just once. The girls basketball team (12-2) tied Lower Lake for the only co-championship among the school’s six league titles.
The six league champions were a combined 77-4-3, a .935 winning percentage.
Those six league champions produced seven most valuable players — Victor Cacho in boys soccer, Riley Goff in volleyball and co-MVP in softball, Kyle Ellis as co-MVP in both boys basketball and baseball, Alma Perez as co-MVP in girls basketball, and Logan Barrick as co-MVP in baseball.
Even those Kelseyville varsity teams that didn’t produce championships in 2016-17 made their mark in some memorable way. During the fall sports season, the football squad tied for third in the league standings before winning its first two playoff games, including an upset of Middletown in the North Coast Section Division IV quarterfinals at Middletown. The Knights posted a 9-4 overall record, their best in years. The girls soccer team played .500 ball in the NCL I, pushed the league’s top teams to the limit in their meetings, and qualified for the postseason before finishing at 8-7-5 overall. The cross country teams, boys and girls, had successful seasons on the Coastal Mountain Conference circuit while producing one of the Redwood Empire’s top runners in sophomore Andre Williams, who won the CMC individual championship, medaled (eighth) at the North Coast Section Meet in Hayward, and ran 15th at the CIF State Cross Country Championships in Fresno, just five places shy of a medal.
In the winter sports season, the wrestling team held its own in the tough CMC ranks dominated by Willits and Lower Lake. Kelseyville 138-pounder Alex Garcia, a sophomore, won his weight class at the CMC Championships and was named outstanding middleweight.
During the spring sports season, the golf team produced another league/conference MVP in Matt Wotherspoon as the Knights, third in the final CMC South standings, just missed a playoff at-large berth. The school’s swimmers, who compete with Clear Lake as a combined team, also had a successful season. Nick Dobusch won the 100-yard butterfly and 100 backstroke at the CMC Championship Meet while Kelsyeville team Lauren Rudnick won the 100 butterfly and 50 freestyle.
While it will be difficult for the Knights to maintain such across-the-board domination in 2017-18 owing to graduation losses, they will enter the fall portion of the season with the volleyball team looking for a third straight NCL I title and the boys soccer team chasing a fourth.
