Usually when teams from different leagues become good, they never play each other, so Thursday's Maria Carrillo-Analy volleyball match at Sebastopol is huge. Last season they were the top two large school volleyball teams in the Empire and they both figure to be good again this year. Maria Carrillo competes in Division II and Analy in Division III, so there's no chance they'll meet in the postseason. Kudos to coaches Nancy Williams and Jeff Nielson for scheduling this match.

The volleyball has already been hot and furious. In a match of small-school powers Tuesday, Rincon Valley Christian won at Anderson Valley in four games. RVC is 2-0 and AV is 2-1.

The Vikings suffered a couple of injuries to key players in their opening loss to Grant of Sacramento.

The Vikings' only returning lineman, Jay Luchetti, broke a bone in his leg (non-weight bearing bone) and will be out 4-6 weeks according to coach Jason Franci.

Also, quarterback Derek Klomhaus, who threw for over 100 yards in the fourth quarter, has a slight seperation in his throwing shoulder. He'll probably play against this week's opponent, Lincoln of San Francisco.

I just got done talking to Tomales football coach Leon Feliciano.

He reminded me of how difficult it is to coach in the small school ranks. Dropping enrollment, soccer the same time of year and a changing student body can affect drastically a small school football team.

Already this week, Round Valley dropped its varsity program. Mendocino didn't field a team and Anderson Valley is trying to return after a year away from the sport. Point Arena, which didn't field a team two years ago, saw Round Valley disband just before its game last Saturday and this week won't play because another opponent, Wilson Prep of Oakland is not fielding sports.

Feliciano, whosed teams are always competitive, has seen Tomales' enrollment drop from 280 students when he arrived at the school over a decade ago to 170 today. Tomales always relied on the families from the nearby dairies for players. Many dairies have closed up. There are more Hispanic students and they tend to favor soccer over football. When the two sports play in the same season it puts another crunch on football.

Leon said the hardest thing is to maintain consistency at the small school level and praised St. Vincent's Gary Galloway and Middletown's Bill Foltmer for doing exactly that.

As far as the future of North Central League II football.....well, right now its a year-to-year proposition.

Montgomery really didn't play all that bad in its opener. It's just that Grant of Sacramento was that good.

The Pacers had better than average size, excellent speed and their tacklers never missed.

Their head coach was correct when he said their best trait is athleticism. One play late in the game, the Grant QB threw behind the receiver, but he made an adjustment, somehow caught the ball behind him and turned it into a big gain.

I thought Monty QB Derek Klomhaus did a good job his first time operating the Pistol Offense. It's an option offense at times, but when he throws it's out of the pocket. He showed good poise under heavy pressure (he was sacked six times) and in the fourth quarter, against some second string defenders, he was 6-of-10 passing for 107 yards and threw a 35-yard TD to James Berthinier.

Montgomery should be all right. Grant is on a whole different level. I could see the Pacers giving De La Salle a game.

I will be writing a high school blog beginning this weekend with items I won't necessarily use in game stories or high school notebooks.