Schools

For the student-athletes of the Healdsburg Track & Field team, the Santa Rosa Field Event Jamboree, March 15, and the Dublin Distance Fiesta, March 21-22, bookend the start and end of spring break. “These meets highlight the two extremes of track and field,” said head coach Kate Guthrie.

Not everyone is glued to the NFL playoffs this year, for obvious reasons. The NBA has its disappointments, too, and that college football season was even longer than usual. What’s a sports fan to do? The answer is obvious: watch the Greyhounds play.

When last we checked in with the boys soccer team, they had just begun their league season with a tie game against Piner, 1-1, on the Healdsburg field. The following Saturday,  Jan. 19, they headed up to Lake County to meet Kelseyville, and came home with a 5-0 win in their non-league column...

With winter sports barely in the rear-view mirror, here comes spring down the road to shift focus—to badminton, swimming, boys tennis, and track and field, and especially baseball and softball.

The boys team has not been able to get much traction in the rain-soaked field, and neither have most of its opponents. The NBL-Redwood league standings show many of the teams have more tie games than either wins or losses. The Greyhounds, for instance, have two wins and no losses, but four tie games—Piner High, just ahead of them in the league standings, is 3-0-3.

This year locals are proud to find both boys and girls soccer teams in the NCS playoff, both in Division 4 in line with their size. And the girls basketball team is in the playoffs as well, in the tougher Division 2. (Unfortunately, all three teams lost on Wednesday night, so Healdsburg High's winter sports season is officially over.)

The Healdsburg softball team had a series of blowout wins against opponents earlier in the season, until it went to Sonoma Valley and encountered a fired-up Lady Dragons team. Often a league contender themselves, the Dragons had been on an unlucky streak until Healdsburg came to town...

Weight classes have a meaning, and a strategy, although judges today are pretty strict in their weight calls. The technology of measuring weights is so sophisticated these days, there are few if any ways to “nudge” the scale. “So if you go to a competition and you step on a scale, and you are a 10th of a pound over, you are disqualified” in the weight class, Scott Weidemier said. “There’s no leeway. They’re all digital scales these days, that are certified every year.”

As is often the case, track and field is among the first spring sports to get underway. The big event opening the season was the Big Cat Invitational, held at Santa Rosa High on Saturday, March 1. Last weekend came the Gaucho Relays, at Casa Grade High. This weekend it's the Field Event Jamboree in Santa Rosa.

Though this was AJ Crosby’s first year head-coaching a high school varsity team, it was by no means his first coaching experience. “Last year I was a JV coach at Rancho Cotate,” he said. “And for the past four-and-a-half years I’ve been a head coach for North Bay Basketball Academy for AAU seasons.”