LOWER LAKE — Lower Lake High School’s decision to skip the North Coast Section Division II Team Dual Championships on Saturday in Eureka earned the wrestling program a penalty that will be enforced next season.
“We did qualify for the Division II duals but we could not attend,” Lower Lake head coach Ed Fuchs said on Monday. “It’s not a good penalty but it’s not a bad penalty. I just know it’s not good for our program.”
Under North Coast Section Bylaw 506H, “Any team who qualifies as an automatic or at-large entry, but does not participate in the respective championship will be subject to a reduction of contests the following year.”
What that means in Lower Lake’s case is that wrestlers will be limited to 32 matches during the 2019-20 season instead of the normal 40 matches. That number does not include matches in the league, NCS or CIF championships.
“We kind of got beat up,” Fuchs said of the last couple of weeks. “Our team was spiraling downhill with injuries and couple of kids had ringworm, so we took the penalty rather than go up there (to Eureka) and compete. I felt it was better for our program to sit it out and use the time to rest and get healthy.”
Fuchs, who has built Lower Lake’s program into one of the best in the Coastal Mountain Conference, said he didn’t make the decision lightly. Beside his team’s overall health, the Trojans had a transportation problem as only one van was available Friday morning when he wanted to leave for Eureka.
“We would have had to wait until Friday night to get another van and I didn’t want to leave Friday night or Saturday morning,” Fuchs said. “I know this doesn’t look good for our program, but I’m not sure what else we could have done.”
Lower Lake needs a victory on Saturday at the CMC Championships in Kelseyville to earn a share of the conference title, which is a goal the team has been aiming at all season, according to Fuchs. The Trojans lost just one regular-season conference dual this season, to undefeated Willits, the team that Lower Lake tied for the CMC title a year ago.
“Hopefully this will give us the rest we need,” Fuchs said of skipping the NCS Team Duals.
Fuchs said he was happy to see Willits, Middletown and Kelseyville finish first, third and fourth, respectively, at the Division III Team Dual Championships, which also took place on Saturday at Eureka. Because Lower Lake has a larger enrollment than other CMC schools, it competes up in Division II.
“It was good to see the other CMC schools do well,” Fuchs said. “I wish we could have been there. It was a bummer”
