Prep football program is born
Charter school MAS Bulls New Mexico’s newest varsity team
The hallways of the Mission Achievement and Success (MAS) charter school serve an architectural purpose. Elementary-age kids in one section, the middle schoolers in another, the high school students someplace else. Everyone under the same communal roof.
There are close to a thousand of these students walking the halls, from 8:30 a.m. until 4:20 p.m. It is an unusually long school day, to be sure, but not without purpose or benefits.
“Eclectic,” is how MAS board chairman Bruce Langston described the student body.
To these structured academic environs, Mission Achievement and Success has now added football, and the MAS Bulls are the state’s newest varsity program.
“After a long day,” senior offensive lineman/linebacker Omar Hernandez said, “we’re eager to
get out here, put the pads on, and play like brothers do.”
After two years of sub-varsity games, MAS, which is located just a runway down Yale Boulevard from the Albuquerque International Sunport, is competing as a varsity program, albeit against a schedule of mostly sub-varsity teams.
On Saturday, Class 2A MAS — which dropped its 2017 opener to the Belen JV last weekend — will play its first varsity-onvarsity game at Cobre. The Bulls also will face Cuba’s varsity in a couple of weeks.
Without a home field — the Bulls practice at the nearby Loma Linda Community Center, about 100 yards north of the MAS campus — all nine games this season are on the road.
The school has almost 30 football players, including four seniors, plus a few eighthgraders who play exclusively on special teams.
“We have some very solid athletes. We’re just very young,” said 27-year-old MAS head coach Elijah Langston, a graduate of Del Norte (2008) and New Mexico State (2012). He is the son of the MAS board chairman.
Only about 25 percent of MAS players possess what could be moderately defined as football savvy, leaving Langston and his three assistants to acclimate the rest.
“Typically as a coach who has been around at the varsity level, you expect the kids to have some background. But that’s not necessarily the case here,” Langston said. “I expect these kids to understand, but there’s not a background for these kids to draw on.”
Langston, who works for the state’s Department of Corrections, became coach in March and had to jump in on the fly and dive into the Bulls’ offseason program. And they are modest beginnings, including a de facto weight room — “it’s a garage with two bench presses and some dumbbells,” Elijah Langston said — to go along with no home field and the aforementioned absence of player experience. Recruitment efforts are ongoing.
“It was my last year,” senior two-way lineman Osbaldo Andujo said, “and I wanted to do something I haven’t done in high school before.”
Still, even at a school with that new-program smell, Bulls players say the growing pains don’t make losing any easier.
“We’re fairly competitive,” said junior lineman Ryan Wagner. “When we lose a game, we’re extremely angry.”
MAS’ game uniform consists of a plain black helmet, white jersey tops, black pants and red socks. The school is still working on getting Bulls mascot decals for the helmets. Football here is in its infancy, but academically, MAS is rated as one of New Mexico’s best.
To wit: Junior running back/ defensive back Damian Garcia Salas started his high school years at Albuquerque High. Why the change? “Grades,” he said.
“I was a 1.2 (GPA) as a freshman at Albuquerque High,” he said. “Now I’m a 3.8. We’re here to learn. This (football) is a privilege.”
The school hopes to soon be a full-fledged varsity program, attached to a district and competing for a playoff berth. The earliest that could happen is 2018. In the meantime, this group is here to help do the heavy lifting.
“As a team, we’ve been growing,” said Hernandez. “We’ve learned to coexist as a family and as a brotherhood.”
“I love being a brick in this foundation,” added Wagner.
Soon, Bruce Langston said, MAS plans to add volleyball, boys and girls basketball, and track and field to the list of varsity sports, although the timing for those additions are in flux.
“These kids are excited and enthusiastic,” coach Langston said. “It’s a blast. We grew up in a football family, and it can be stressful at times, but it’s nice to be on the field, to be around the kids and coach them up.”