LAKE COUNTY >> If it seems like a bumpy ride, you’d be right. Then again, the bumpy ride of the 2021 high school football regular season certainly beats the COVID-clobbered 2020 season that never took place.
It’s all how you look at it.
With Week 11, which is the final week of regular-season play, knocking at the door, that means the end of the road for Kelseyville (1-8) and Lower Lake (0-6), who fittingly enough meet Friday night in Lower Lake hoping to salvage something out of a pretty rough 2021 campaign. In other games involving Lake County teams, all taking place under the lights Friday, all three have title implications of one sort or another.
In the North Central League II, Upper Lake (3-0 league, 5-2 overall) travels to Miranda to take on South Fork (3-0, 4-3) in a winner-take-all battle for the league championship. It’s a rematch of a non-league game won 16-0 by Upper Lake two weeks ago in Upper Lake.
In the NCL I, Middletown (5-1, 6-3) travels to St. Helena (5-0, 7-1) looking to secure a share of the league title with an upset win, and just getting to this game has been anything but routine for the Mustangs this week. If the host Saints prevail, they are the undisputed league champions.
Clear Lake (4-1, 6-2) is home against Cloverdale (2-3, 4-4) and will certainly be rooting for Middletown because it’s the only way the Cardinals can snag a share of the title just as long as they also beat the Eagles.
Win or lose, Upper Lake, Middletown and Clear Lake are all headed for the postseason – the Cougars to the new North Coast Section eight-man football playoffs, Middletown to the Division 6 playoffs, and Clear Lake to the Division 7 playoffs, all with maximum brackets of eight teams.
Of the four Lake County teams that play in the NCL I, Kelseyville, Lower Lake and Middletown all compete in Division 6 along with Fort Bragg while Clear Lake is in Division 7 along with Cloverdale, St. Helena and Willits.
Middletown at St. Helena
Earlier in the week the Mustangs faced the unsavory prospect of playing St. Helena minus a half-dozen starters. A private Halloween party attended by several Middletown players turned out to be plenty frightening when a girl in attendance tested positive for COVID-19, according to head coach Bill Foltmer.
As a precaution, those players who were there were held out of practice Tuesday until it could be confirmed whether or not they were exposed to the girl in question. As of Wednesday morning, Foltmer said he felt confident he would have most if not all of those players against the Saints.
“We lost a day of practice, but it looks like we’ll have them for Friday,” Foltmer said. “I’ll pull up JVs if I have to and play this game because it’s St. Helena’s homecoming and senior night and there’s no way I’m going to let them down. Kelseyville did the same thing for us.”
As previously undefeated Clear Lake found out last week in a 40-14 loss to the Saints in St. Helena, turnovers can’t happen.
“If we’re going to have any chance, we can’t have turnovers,” Foltmer said. “Clear Lake gave them two scores right off the bat because of fumbles.”
Foltmer said the Saints’ standout running back, senior Ivan Robledo, gets most of the attention when the topic is St. Helena’s running game, but he isn’t a one-man show.
“People forget about the other kid they have (senior Harrison Ronayne), and he had more rushing yards against Clear Lake than Robledo,” Foltmer said. “They run the run-option game real well. You bite on the dive and their quarterback (Spencer Printz) is out and around the corner for big yards before you know it.”
And St. Helena’s running game starts with a physical offensive line, one that gets off the ball faster than any other team the Mustangs have faced, according to Foltmer.
“We have our hands full,” Foltmer said. “St. Helena is a talented and well-coached team and that’s the reason they’re in first place and undefeated (in league).”
While St. Helena’s offense always comes up first when Saints football is discussed, both Foltmer and Clear Lake head coach Mark Cory said the St. Helena defense is as good or better, and one big reason is the play of Robledo at middle linebacker.
“Defensively he is even better as a middle linebacker,” Foltmer said. “He’s a load to block.”
“He’s one of the best middle linebackers I’ve seen in a long, long time,” Cory added. “He’s just so quick and reads as well as anybody I’ve seen in a long time. He’s a fantastic football player. I think he has a future as a safety in college at a decent level.”
According to Foltmer, the bottom line for the Mustangs, who dropped a 26-18 decision to Clear Lake earlier this season in Lakeport, is that they have a chance to come away with some share of the NCL I title if they beat the Saints.
“Our goal at the start of the season was to play for a championship and now here we are going into our last league game with a chance to do that, so yeah, we’re happy about that,” Foltmer said.
Cloverdale at Clear Lake
Looking to regroup from last week’s loss to St. Helena, the Clear Lake Cardinals will have to do so without one of their top defensive players, nose guard Ty Harmon, who is out with a lower leg injury.
“We’re hoping to have him back for the first round of the playoffs,” Cory said. “He’s been a very strong player for us. He plays with his hair on fire and has been a huge part of our defense, someone we will really miss, for his energy alone.”
Harmon also starts on Clear Lake’s offensive line.
Outside of Harmon, the Cardinals figure to be at full strength for a Cloverdale team coming off a 41-21 non-league loss to Montgomery High School of Santa Rosa last week after Lower Lake canceled its league game with the Eagles because of a COVID-19 quarantine.
“They’re a good team with good speed,” Cory said of the Eagles. “We have to kind of regroup. A lot of what happened last week (in St. Helena) had to do with St. Helena, but a lot of it had to do with ourselves.”
Multiple early turnovers by the Cardinals allowed St. Helena to outscore them 20-0 in the first quarter.
“We need to get back to playing football the way we’ve been playing football,” said Cory, who added that winning the turnover battle against opponents (even in a non-league loss to Pierce) has been part of the Cardinals’ winning formula this season.
Upper Lake at South Fork
“They all know what’s at stake,” Upper Lake head coach Vince Moran said of Upper Lake’s players going into the Cougars’ second meeting this season with the South Fork Cubs, a game that will decide the NCL II champion and likely give the winner a better seed for the upcoming playoffs.
“If we get it (the win and league title), we’ll be set up pretty nicely for the playoffs,” Moran said.
Since it’s the second meeting between the two teams, Moran said it’s quite likely both schools will run plays they didn’t reveal two weeks ago in Upper Lake.
“We didn’t want to throw anything at them if we didn’t need to, so we kept it pretty basic,” Moran said.
Upper Lake hasn’t been in the position of playing for a league pennant in many years and Moran said his players have been “focused” all week in practice.
“The first time we’ve been in this situation in a while and I’m happy for them, especially my seniors,” he said.
While the Cougars still have a handful of players with the usual nagging injuries that are normal for this late in a season, he said they are in better shape than they were two weeks ago against the Cubs.
“We’ve had a lot of guys banged up, still do, but fewer than we did after a week off,” Moran said of last week’s open date on the schedule.
Upper Lake’s coach said his biggest concern is not having played a road game since a season-opening 46-0 win at Tomales on Aug. 27. The Cougars had three other away games on their schedule, but two league opponents folded their programs and another non-league game was canceled Sept. 24 at Calistoga because of a COVID-19 quarantine.
“You get in a routine prepping for games home and away and we haven’t played one (on the road) in a long time.”
Moran said the Cougars would arrive in Miranda well ahead of game time (6 p.m.) so they can acclimate themselves to their surroundings.
“It’s not like we haven’t made that trip before,” Moran said of past away games against the Cubs.
Upper Lake played South Fork four times between 2017-19, all of those contests taking place in Miranda and all four resulting in Cubs victories (three league games, one non-league game).
Kelseyville at Lower Lake
In varsity-only action that begins at 6 p.m., Lower Lake gets one last shot at avoiding a winless season on senior night against Kelseyville.
Kelseyville head coach Erick Larsen said it’s been a long season for his Knights as well.
“The modified quarantine leaves you with so much uncertainly and uneasiness,” Larsen said. “It’s a variable you can’t control and it leaves you emotionally drained trying to deal with it.
“I’m just glad we’re going to be able to get a game in, gratified we get to play. It has been a rocky road with all this COVID tracing,” Larsen added.
The Knights are likely to be without two-way starter Sam Vanoven because of a nagging hamstring injury.
“He’s a great kid, so I feel bad for him, but his health is more important to me,” Larsen said.
Kelseyville’s defense needs to keep an eye on Lower Lake quarterback Xander Hernandez and running back Makoa Brown, according to Larsen.
“They have a number of skill kids who can hurt you if you’re not disciplined,” Larsen said.
Lower Lake last played a game Oct. 15 at home against Fort Bragg. It canceled Oct. 22 (Willits) and Oct. 29 (Cloverdale) league games because of COVID-19 quarantine. When the Trojans returned from their two-week COVID-19 quarantine Monday, only three JV players showed up to practice, forcing the Trojans to cancel their JV game with Kelseyville.
“It’s crazy,” Lower Lake head coach Jeremy Jakubowski said of the football program’s bumpy ride through 2021. “It’s been a battle of attrition.”
While it might not seem like the Trojans have much left to play for, Jakubowski said the goal is to send out the team’s seniors, who missed all of their junior season because of the pandemic, with a win.
“Winning for the guys who showed up and put in the time this season,” Jakubowski said. “I’ve told the sophomores and juniors we need to send them off on a positive note.”
From the start of the 2021 campaign, the Trojans haven’t been able to catch anything resembling a break.
“We had a tough preseason that I thought would translate into league wins but it didn’t happen,” he said.
Between football injuries and COVID-19 quarantines, Jakubowski said it’s easily been the toughest season of his 16-year coaching career.
“The hard part of it for me is that I can’t detach myself from the end of the season … I start pushing forward to the next season and who knows what that’s going to be like?”
Perhaps the biggest concern in facing Kelseyville is a Lower Lake defense that hasn’t held up well against the run this season.
“We don’t do well against physical, running teams,” Jakubowski said. “If we can force them to pass it that gives us a chance.”
Lower Lake’s offense has struggled even more than the defense.
“”We’re not putting up points and sustaining drives.”
