KELSEYVILLE — There won’t be any football played around the North Coast Section this weekend, including a scheduled quarterfinal-round game Saturday night between the Kelseyville Knights and Cloverdale Eagles.
“It’s 100-percent off,” Kelseyville High School football head coach and athletic director Erick Larsen said early Friday afternoon after getting the official word from the North Coast Section office that an attempt to move this weekend’s games to the Eureka and Fortuna area in Divisions II-V had failed.
“In every division there was at least one game where teams weren’t willing to travel north,” Larsen said.
The Knights (9-1), the No. 1 seed in the Division V playoffs, weren’t among those teams, but it doesn’t really matter now, according to Larsren.
“No one is playing this weekend,” he said.
Unhealthy air quality created by drift smoke from the deadly Camp Fire in Butte County once again forced section officials to postpone quarterfinal-round games, this time until the weekend of Nov. 23-24. Semifinal games take place Nov. 30-Dec. 1. With the state playoffs beginning the weekend of Dec. 7-8, there won’t be enough time for NCS teams to hold a championship round. Semifinal winners after the Nov. 30-Dec. 1 games will advance to the state playoffs based on head-to-head results, if applicable, or by coin toss. As an example, if Kelseyville and No. 2 seed Salesian are the finalists in Division V, a coin toss would decide it since those two teams haven’t met this season. If it’s Kelseyville vs. St. Helena or Berean Christian, Kelseyville gets the nod based on head-to-head results. If it’s Kelseyville vs. Stellar Prep, Stellar Prep would move on because it beat Kelseyville back on Aug. 17, the Knights’ only loss of the year.
No. 5 seed Middletown (9-3), the only Division V team that has already reached the semifinals after wins against St. Vincent and Fort Bragg, also remains alive for a sectional title and state playoff berth. The Mustangs meet the Kelseyville-Cloverdale winner in the semifinals. If they win that game, they’ll own the head-to-head tiebreaker over St. Helena and Berean Christian. They have not faced either Stellar Prep or Salesian, so a coin flip would be necessary if one of those two teams is the other finalist.
Before Kelseyville plays Cloverdale on Nov. 24, the Knights will have been idle for nearly a month since their regular-season finale Oct. 26 against Clear Lake.
“Ten percent of life is what happens to you and the other 90 percent is how you react to it,” Larsen said. “We need to concentrate on that 90 percent. Whoever comes out of this is probably going to be the team that handles this (layoff) the best.”
Larsen said “a frustrating situation” needs to be kept in the proper perspective given why the North Coast Section is in this predicament to begin with.
“I’m sitting here at my window in my warm home looking outside the window,” Larsen said. “What matters is I still have a home and most of the people in Paradise do not. Every time I start bitching about this, I keep in mind what those people are going through and I realize just how lucky I am.”
The town of Paradise was destroyed by the Camp Fire that is producing the smoky conditions throughout Lake County and the Bay Area. At last count 63 people had lost their lives in the fire, more than 600 people are still missing, and most of the 12,000 structures that have been destroyed are homes.
