Welcome to the Humboldt Del Norte League Website

The Humboldt Del Norte League Sports at the high school level has an interesting history. Please the review this page. The Humboldt Del Norte League hopes you will enjoy and contribute to this site.

The North Coast has had a rich history of high school sports and debate. The first recorded activity dates back to 1887. That was the year that Eureka High School had its first football team. One hundred and ten years ago the first young athletes came together as a team. The mission of this site is to collect the missing information about our secondary schools interaction and accomplishments. The purpose of this site is to document individual and collective achievements before this information is lost for all time.

The records at this site are still under construction and will be for some time to come.

The records here are listed by School Year. 1915/16 would mean the seniors graduated in or about June 1916. There has been some confusion with dates. This is attributed to seasons of sport changing for different reasons.

This large project spans about 95 years of local high school competition. The league began in 1906 with the first members being Ferndale, Arcata and Fortuna high schools. The structure of the league has changed many times. In trying to keep this as simple as possible, the site refers to the conferences as the Big 5 and Little 4. I realize this is not 100 % accurate, but the bulk of our records are currently in this alignment. The sports are organized by the current seasons. Additionally, you will discover how time and events both local and international have effected interscholastic sports on the north coast.

Some examples follow:

Basketball, one of our longest seasons was first played by the young women. It could be suggested that it was not a guy's sport yet. However, our research shows that our young women only played men's rules in the early 1900's. The league structure was very flexible during World War I and II. During the first War, several Fortuna High School students did not play sports because they were very involved in the Fortuna High School Cadet Corps. During World War II, several schools did not compete or they cut back because of the fuel rationing.

Debate was very popular from 1906 to 1921. The Debate teams would go with the other teams to another league school and make a complete day of competition. It was generally the custom in the 1910 and 1920's to have the guest school teams to dinner before returning to their home schools.

Size of the schools was an issue right from the beginning. Eureka did not join the league the first year for a few reasons. The primary reason was how the league wanted to score Track and Field. The original league rules called for having Fortuna, Arcata and Ferndale's scores totaled. If the combined score were larger than Eureka's, then Eureka would lose; the winner would be the highest score of the three smaller schools. Needless to say, Eureka did not buy into that plan.

You will notice question marks (?) behind some of the entries. This simply means that the source document did not have all the information or we took a "best guess" based on the source information.

During your journey in the Humboldt Del Norte League Web you will see entries that are listed as follows: 1942 Hvy and 1942 Lt This example shows 1942 Heavyweight and 1942 Lightweight. The Heavyweight athlete was 120 lbs or more. The Heavyweight and Lightweight system was also referred to the Unlimited and Limited. It can be confusing sometimes, because both teams were considered Varsity Sports and All County Athletic Awards were given on both teams.

Near the bottom of the home page is a section called Miscellaneous Sports. This section includes sports or activities that have been addressed by the league, but have fallen out of favor or funding. This maybe the section that is hardest to research. It is our hope that someone will have this information and provide it. Additionally the Humboldt Del Norte League's Code of Ethics, the important dates of the league, references and Organizational structure are listed.

Located at the bottom of the home page you will find a Data Input Form, a E-Mail button for the Webmaster along with Links to the California Interscholastic Federation's North Coast Section and State offices.

Several different resources have been used in the research. I have received help from several people. I would like to thank the Times Standard Sports Staff and the Humboldt Beacon Sport Staff. They have provided insight, information and support. We are in the process of developing a section to deal with our local sports writer's picks for their All County Teams. It will be a few months until I have it all sorted out.

If you find an error in the records, they are easy to correct. All you have to do is report them to the Webmaster.

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