Hide Article Text (OCR)
Dear Mr. Tostado:When I first read your article I was 100' * in favor of such a tournament for this section of Northern California. We organized a mild campaign to try and hold such a tourney here at South Fork.Mr. Schediwy, Principal here at South Fork, appointed me as tournament director. To hold such a post season affair one must have ball clubs so I mailed out 30 feelers to schools mostly south of here.wI felt that most schools here in the Upper Northern California would be more than ready to appear. I was happy to find that out of the 30 offers. 16 reported that they would come. Here are the schools that gave their sanction to the tournament:St. Mary’s High of Berkeley. Serra High of San Mateo, Vallejo High. St. Helena High, Potter VaMey High, Montgomery High of Santa Rosa. Analy High, Anderson Valley High of Boonville. Ukiah High. Antioch High, Covejo High. Napa High. Petaluma High, St. Elizabeth's High of Oakland. Sonoma High.This is a good indication that there is a great need for post season tournaments in Northern California. Many coaches wrote me that there are not enough tourneys and many good ball clubs especially in this section of Northern California have no place to go after the regular season.Maybe we have broken the ice this year and if the coaches can get together and decide the best place to host sucfi a tournament perhaps next year it will come into reality.Thank you for giving birth to the idea and for your support to such an event.Yours truly,(s) Billy Joe Dashner Basketball Coach South Fork High School☆ ☆ ☆The idea for a tournament to which Coach Dashner refers is a Tournament of Champions for the schools in the Redwood Empire in the main — which we took a Time Out to tell about a while back.And it isn’t so much our idea as it was the thought of coaches and scribes in the southern part of the empire — who have become quite disenchanted with a similar tourney held annually in Berkeley.High school teams in leagues in Marin and Sonoma counties, for the most part, have experienced little success over the years at Berkeley (and in 15 years we can recally only two — Fortuna and Eureka — Humboldt-Del Norte League teams in the Berkeley affair) and the talk in those sections of the Redwood Empire last month was about the possibility of establishing a Tournament of Champions for the empire.I ☆ ☆ ☆We have not heard anv more about it since the idea initially appeared in the Santa Rosa Press-Demo-crat — but within a day after our Time Out, South Fork High football coach Andy Vinci phoned to let us know that South Fork High liked the idea and was going to try to hold the affair.Subsequently, as principal Philip Schediwy disclosed at the H-DN administrators’ meeting here last week, his school found the expense might be a little too much for his small district and offered the tourney g to any other school in the H-DN which might be interested.☆ .☆ ☆Well, no one in the Humboldt-Del Norte CIF League is interested — inasmuch as the administrators let it go by the boards for the lack of a motion.☆ ☆ ☆The H-DN administrators have maintained a longstanding policy against holding post-season tournaments or playoffs of any kind among their own member schools.In addition, the Big Five Conference schools let their own pre-season basketball tournament die a natural death of sorts for several reasons, including the one that five entries made for unwieldy scheduling and another that both heavyweight and lightweight teams were too many to try to work into a weekend event.Under the heavyweight and lightweight set-up, the H-DN administrators regarded both as varsity teams, giving them equal status with regard to the awarding of letters and such, the the varsity and frosh-soph setup has changed that somewhat.Meanwhile, back at the Little Four, the even number of entries made for no such unwieldy numbers for either entries or schedules, and therefore their preseason Christmas tourney continues.And apparently it does all right at the box office since the Little Four schools are rotating its site each year and remain anxious to do so.☆ ☆ ☆Work on such a tournament has to start a year in advance since sanctions are needed not only from the schools anxious to compete in such affairs but also from the North Coast Section and State bodies of the California Interscholastic Federation.And such sanctions, though once given, are not annually automatic — they must be re-petitioned for each year.re. ☆ ☆ ☆Furthermore, there is no guarantee that any area or any district can support such a tournament — and they usually need an “angel” to underwrite the expenses: even the Press-Democrat pointed this out.Even the local schools with the larger capacity gymnasiums can count on the fingers of one hand the nights they’ve played to full houses.☆ ☆ ☆It seems reasonable to say that a post-season Tournament of Champions would draw each and every night it was run — but methinks the H-DN administrators are aware that their area is not too famous for its capacity basketball crowds — though maybe from the cash-paying customers’ point of view, it’s the student bodies. The kids just won’t sit still and watch the ball game, at a ball game. They’re up and down like yo-yos all the game long — and not just in their seats (which is par for the course) but in the aisles and foyers (where the popcorn and other action is).Too bad too because the ball clubs belong to the student bodies — their monies pay the bills, but their cards let them in free.To each his own, the student bodies will have to(Continued on Page 37)
Newspaper Details
Eureka Humboldt Times
Eureka, California, US
Thu, Feb 10, 1966
Page 1
Full Page
Clipped by
Drinda J.
NV, USA 07 Nov 2016
Other Publications Near Eureka, California
Times Standard
Eureka Times Standard
Eureka Humboldt Times
Eureka Humboldt Standard
Humboldt Standard
