KELSEYVILLE — It’s Upper Lake vs. Middletown in the varsity girls bracket to open the 49th annual Stokes Tournament on Thursday at the Kelseyville High School gym.
Upper Lake (8-1) and Middletown (5-3) are both off to 2-0 starts in their respective leagues — Upper Lake in the North Central League II and Middletown in the NCL I — and figure to be in the thick of things when NCL I and NCL II action resumes in early January.
Middletown-Upper Lake tips off at noon, the first of six first-round games Thursday. The tournament runs through Saturday. The rest of Thursday’s schedule has Upper Lake vs. Elsie Allen (boys) at 1:30 p.m., Point Arena vs. Lower Lake (girls) at 3 p.m., Middletown vs. Forest Lake (boys) at 4:30 p.m., Kelseyville vs. Ferndale (girls) at 6 p.m., and Lower Lake vs. Ukiah (boys) at 7:30p.m.
The two other boys teams in the field — Willits and host Kelseyville — won’t play until Friday. Willits draws the Upper Lake-Elsie Allen loser at 10:30 a.m. while Kelseyville meets the Upper Lake-Elsie Allen winner at 6 p.m. Willits couldn’t play on Thursday because it has only two open games on its schedule and the Stokes Tournament is a three-game tournament. As a result, Kelseyville agreed to a Thursday bye so that other tourney teams would get their full three games.
Kelseyville’s boys (3-3) enter play on a three-game winning streak while the Kelseyville girls (0-5) are still looking for their first win of the season.
The 2020 Stokes Tournament was canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic. When last held in 2019, Cloverdale won the varsity boys division while Upper Lake captured the girls division.
