An old rivalry that is picking up steam
Eagles get last laugh in Pit on Thursday with a comeback semifinal win over Tigers
Just 13 miles separate Belen and Los Lunas high schools. The proximity is a big reason for one of the most heated rivalries in the state. There’s of course a great deal of history. A huge boys basketball game Thursday afternoon at the Pit fueled the rivalry.
Families and friends intertwine at the schools. Case in point: Belen’s Ryan Garcia and Nicholas Gaerlan of Los Lunas are cousins. They see each other every weekend and are very close, Gaerlan said.
After the game, not much was said to each other, simply: “Good game.”
That it was, as Belen stormed back from a 16-point deficit to earn a 50-41 victory over Los Lunas and advance to Saturday’s New Mexico Class 5A championship game. Gaerlan scored 10 points. Garcia finished with seven, and the win.
With 14 seconds left and Belen protecting a 49-41 lead, Eagles fans chanted: “Just like football.”
Alexis Garcia, who scored six points, said it was sweeter to beat the Tigers in the 5A semifinals. Just like football, he’s going to the championship game, as he played on the Eagles’ football team.
Garcia and Garrett Gallegos (23 points) said the Los Lunas players were talking a lot during their lead in the third quarter.
“They were letting us have it on the court,” Gallegos said.
The Eagles had the last word.
“I’m new to the rivalry,” said Andrew Dunnell, Belen’s first-year coach. “I know we are crosstown, right (down) I-25. (Los Lunas has) always been kind of Belen’s bigger brother. It’s what I told our guys, it’s not a rivalry. It’s a dynasty. They always beat us. I think now we are starting to turn it into a rivalry because we are starting to get some W’s. The fans really enjoy it and it’s a really big deal to our parents and fans. But to us it’s a basketball game and it’s one we like to win.”
For the Tigers, the loss was especially hard. They held a 2-1 advantage against the Eagles during the regular season.
“It always stings (to lose), but when you lose to your rival it’s just hard to take,” Los Lunas coach Travis Julian said. “But you have to get better and bounce back. That’s what we’ll do.”
Los Lunas fans had plenty of reason to cheer in the first half and into the third quarter. Tigers fans, mostly students, cheered wildly and smacked together blue and orange thundersticks.
“Tiger pride,” said Dana Sanders, the Los Lunas superintendent, who graduated from Belen in 1982. “The rivalry sort of went away, but now it’s back and really intense. It’s hard to explain it, but you have to be in the middle of it to really know it.”
Sanders is definitely in the middle of it. She’s been working at Los Lunas for 29 years. Her assistant, Susan Chavez, is a third-generation Tiger who graduated from Los Lunas.
“It runs deep,” Chavez said of the rivalry. Ted Padilla, 66, who graduated from Belen in 1969, remembers the Eagles-Tigers rivalry well, as he played football and wrestled for Belen.
“When I was in high school they had to have everything in the day because of fights,” said Padilla, who once coached eighth-grade boys basketball at Los Lunas. “But it was mostly the fans who fought. The players didn’t really fight that much. The rivalry went away when we went into different districts. But now it’s gone intense again because we are in the same district.”
There was intensity during the 5A semifinal game, and it will return next year when the teams meet again. The Eagles want to be known as 5A champions when that happens.