Neither Half Moon Bay nor Fortuna is heading to Sacramento State this week to play in one of the five games commonly referred to as the venue games, within the CIF Football Championship Bowl Games. But that small fact hasn’t dampened the enthusiasm of these two small coastal communities, who are rallying behind their football teams with the type of fervor normally reserved for small towns in the Midwest or in the state of Texas.
“The team is leaving Thursday, and they will have a sheriff’s escort to the Humboldt County line,” said Susie Lewis, whose son JB is a four-year varsity player for Fortuna. “We’re also trying to get a rooter bus, and fill the visiting stands. We are making this a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and everyone in the community is incredibly supportive.”
The lofty status held by the Fortuna players is probably no better exemplified than by one of JB’s experiences in the past week. While at home, the senior captain was approached by a pair of youth football players from the community. The two young boys came seeking a Christmas present – the ability to take a picture with Lewis and get his signature on their footballs. That is the essence of small-town football, and a place where the team captain volunteers to hand over his role as the starting quarterback (the position Lewis played as a junior) to make the team better by playing running back and yielding to junior Zac Claus as the signal-caller.
That experience is mirrored by the embrace of the Half Moon Bay community, who lined the street outside the school to send off the Cougars when they went to play Terra Nova in the CCS Open III championship game. Then last week, the school virtually sold out the stadium before the CIF North regional game against Sutter.
There probably won’t be any line of fans waiting to see Half Moon Bay out of town this week, as the Cougars embark on their 500-mile, eight-hour trek to Chula Vista, south east of San Diego. Half Moon Bay will face Steele Canyon – a large charter school in Spring Valley – on Saturday evening at Southwestern College in the CIF 3-A championship. But the lack of a send-off is only because of the departure time.
“We’re going to head out at six in the morning on Friday, practice Friday afternoon, and get ready for Saturday,” said Half Moon Bay quarterback Gavin Tomberlin, a three-year starter who was recently named the Offensive Player of the Year for the PAL-Bay Division. “Our emotions are high, but we are trying to treat it like any other week.”
The Cougars may be trying to treat it like any other week, but the reality is that it certainly is not like any other week. Half Moon Bay won back-to-back CCS titles outside of the Open Divisions, after previously playing in the PAL-Ocean Division. With a promotion this year to the Bay, the door opened for the possibility of a state championship run, and the Cougars took full advantage.
Despite a roster of just 27 players for the majority of the season, the Cougars rolled through all competition, only once allowing an opponent to stay within single-digits, in a 21-14 win over Aragon. They have arguably been even more dominant in the post-season, including a 41-9 win over Terra Nova in the CCS title game and a 28-7 victory over Sutter in the 3-A North regional.
“I coached these guys growing up, until their eighth grade year,” commented Gavin’s dad, Len Tomberlin. “We were concerned about staying healthy in the Bay, with our depth. But we knew we had the talent among our core players to compete with anyone.”
Now, after playing against much larger schools such as Menlo-Atherton, the Cougars will face another school with twice its enrollment. That doesn’t change Half Moon Bay’s approach.
“We just have to execute this week. They have their own high-powered offense, so we have to execute on our offensive end,” said Gavin Tomberlin. “The Bay Division has prepared us for a team like Steele Canyon. Playing those teams all year got us ready for these playoffs and a state title game.”
Fortuna’s path to the CIF 5-A title game has not been as smooth or as dominant as Half Moon Bay’s, and it doesn’t get any easier this weekend. The Huskies will leave on Thursday to head down to Anaheim, a 12-hour trip from behind the Redwood Curtain. Fortuna will split the drive in half each day, finding places to stay and practice along the route. Then the Huskies will face 14-1 Katella on Saturday evening, in Glover Stadium.
But Fortuna is used to being the underdog. The Huskies were the underdog in a season-opening loss to Cardinal Newman, and the team then had to endure the loss of senior Bailey Foley for the year, after he suffered a stroke on the same night and continues to slowly battle back and progress in his own recovery. Fortuna lived in the shadow of league mate Eureka during the regular season, as the Loggers went unbeaten and nearly reached the semifinals of the loaded NCS Division III playoffs.
Even when the brackets for the section playoffs were announced, Fortuna was placed as the four seed, setting up a semifinal showdown against HDN rival St. Bernard’s. In front of a packed house, the Huskies held off the Crusaders in the final seconds when Shaeden Kadle and Adam Medeiros made a game-saving stop behind the line of scrimmage on a two-point conversion attempt, and then raced past Hercules for the NCS Division IV title.
The 5-A NorCal final pitted Fortuna against Bear River-Grass Valley, another team that was favored by many against the Huskies. But Lewis led a string of 27 straight points for the Huskies, who erased an early six-point deficit to win 34-20. Lewis ran for three scores in the win.
“People from other areas typically under-estimate teams from up here,” said Susie Lewis. “When your son is growing up, and especially now in his senior year, you just hope that everything can play out like this. In a couple weeks, we will be able to sit down and process everything.”
For the Huskies, this week has become not just a chance to play for a state title, but an opportunity to create memories for the members of the program. The football boosters raised money all year, and have worked to put together an NCAA bowl game-like itinerary.
“It’s so exciting to take kids who have never even been outside of Humboldt County,” Lewis commented. “The team is going to dinner at Medieval Times when we get down there, and our boosters was also able to cover Disneyland tickets for the team, for the day after the game. Whatever happens on Saturday night, we will be at the happiest place on Earth on Sunday.”
Of course, neither school is making the trip with the intention of coming home with anything less than a state title. The seniors for each team – four-year players like Lewis and three-year starters like Tomberlin, both team captains heading to a state final – also know this is their final time on the field together.
“The seniors know this is for sure the last week of high school football. We want to make the most of it,” Tomberlin said. “This is a business trip. We want to go down there, take care of business, then come back and get all ‘A’s’ on our finals.”
With the height at which the bar has already been set for these programs, those goals and ambitions certainly seem within reach. After all, they also each have an entire town pulling for them along the way.
