A poignant, and memorable, prep year concludes
This column I author every May always leaves me feeling a little melancholy — and plenty elated.
What will I take from the 2017-18 high school sports year? Well, I will remember girls wrestling on the mat and grown women trying to, ahem, “wrestle” in the stands. A perfect football team. Some of our first-time metro team champions. And I will remember, perhaps more than anything else, a poignant image from — of all things — the state spirit championships. You’ll have to read through to the end for that one.
On that note, today’s column is dedicated to the memories of Casey Jordan Marquez, Francisco Fernandez, Blake Thies and Vince Sanchez.
JUGGLING ACT: Here is how New Mexico
athletics will lay out for 2018-19 and 2019-20 after new districts and classifications were created:
There will only be five classes — except for football, which will keep a Class 6A and yet still have seven overall divisions. I’ll explain more when the time comes.
The state tournament fields will be 12 in basketball and baseball and just 10 in football!
No, wait, that’s not right … it will stay 16 in the first two and 12 in football. And softball will go back to 16, from its current 12.
Tennis is going to 11 state qualifiers, volleyball to 17 and cross country is going to one allencompassing class. (OK, I made those last three up. After 10½ straight months on this beat, I’m loopy.)
One of the most difficult concepts that all of us — including your confused correspondent — will have to embrace is that for many schools, their district partners in football won’t necessarily be the same partners they’ll have in other sports, like basketball. And some schools will occupy two classifications — one in football and another for the other sports.
For now, don’t sweat the details. Work on your tans. THE ‘F’ REPRESENTS FUHGEDDABOUTIT: One of the scholastic changes the NMAA implemented during the 201718 school year is this: Going forward, student-athletes won’t be able to carry an F grade and have a 2.0 GPA and still remain eligible to compete.
I hate to be the glass-halfempty guy, but don’t you imagine that maybe a stray student-athlete here or there blew off a class, believing (rightly) that a single F grade wouldn’t impact his or her playing status for 2017-18, but who now might face a proverbial bucket of academic cold water being dumped over his or her head come August if it happens again?
AN EMPTY LOSS COLUMN:
Manzano’s football team finished off a 13-0 season in December, beating La Cueva 14-7 at Wilson Stadium in a refreshingly defensive-minded Class 6A state final for the school’s first blue trophy in that sport. (Surprisingly, five months after that day, Monarchs coach Chad Adcox resigned.)
Manzano became the first Albuquerque high school not named La Cueva to win a bigschool football championship since Highland in 1989 and was the first undefeated big-school champ from Albuquerque since La Cueva in 2004.
AMAYA THE ONLY ONE?:
December brought us a matchup of basketball-playing cousins, Cibola’s Amaya Brown and Hobbs’ Amaya Lewis, in a game that also paired up — at the time — the state’s No. 1- and No. 2-ranked girls teams in Class 6A. Brown would set Cibola’s alltime scoring record long before the season was over and become a single-season state record holder for rebounds (345). She also signed with Florida State.
But her cousin got in the last jab, as Hobbs won a rematch with the Cougars in the state final. Both games, amazingly enough, went to overtime.
THERE’S ALWAYS ONE: State soccer once more gave us five Albuquerque state champions and one outlier — this time, the boys from Alamogordo. (The Journal’s Geoff Grammer, an Alamo grad who famously is not even smarter than a coin, was going to sing the Alamo fight song in celebration … but we threatened him with bodily harm if he did, and that more or less cured Geoff of that urge.)
The Duke City doesn’t lord over the state’s other regions in the major team sports the way it does soccer, with titles last fall by the La Cueva girls and Albuquerque High boys in 6A, the Academy girls in 5A, plus the Hope Christian boys and the Sandia Prep girls in 1A-4A.
La Cueva’s girls have won 16 championships in 32 seasons of girls soccer.
NO (S)TOPPING THEM: La Cueva’s .500 batting average is impressive. So is the Hope Christian boys basketball team, which won state for a sixth straight March. Or the Elida girls hoopsters, who have won eight in a row. (The latter two schools tied existing team records in their respective genders.) How about Roswell High’s dancers winning state for the seventh year in a row? Or the Albuquerque Academy boys tennis team, with 16 in a row? Or Silver softball, which has eight straight?
THE DARK SIDE: I wish all the news were bright and cheery. It is not. While the state wrestling meet had a girls-only exhibition for the first time, and it was a terrific addition, that particular weekend was marred — badly — by a near brawl in the stands that started with the mothers of two competing wrestlers. Not to mention a Valley High wrestler punching a Rio Grande wrestler twice in the face after losing a controversial decision earlier that same day.
Then there’s my alma mater, Cibola, which had some students fight on a massive scale with students from Volcano Vista after a boys basketball game in February. A black eye, pardon the pun, for everyone involved.
THIS AND THAT: Cleveland had a sweep at state cross country, with Amanda Mayoral (who won every race in CC and track and field) and Yonas Haile winning individually while the Storm boys and girls both won blue trophies. … Kirtland Central’s Kashon Harrison’s cross country season included a victory at the Foot Locker Championships West Regional; Jericho Cleveland of Volcano Vista put up top-10 national times competing in other Arizona and California events in the 1,600 and the mile. … The NMAA added Artesia’s Cooper Henderson, Lordsburg’s Louie Baisa and Pojoaque’s Matt Martinez to its Hall of Fame. … La Cueva boys basketball coach Frank Castillo won his 700th career game. … West Mesa’s girls basketball team made 17 3-pointers, a state record, in a win over Rio Grande. … Belen and Atrisco Heritage both won their initial boys basketball titles; for Atrisco, it was the school’s first title in any sport, and insofar as the Eagles are concerned, I would rate their Class 5A win over Española Valley — in a Pit filled mostly with Sundevil fans — as possibly the most magnificent singlegame achievement of the year. … La Cueva’s Karlee Maes earned All-America soccer status after leading the Bears to a state title. … Cibola’s Lexi Baca was chosen to play in the High School AllAmerican Soccer Game in Orlando. … Artesia won its 30th state football championship. … La Cueva junior Austin Denton was chosen as the 2018 Section 6 recipient of the National High School Spirit of Sport Award by the National Federation of State High School Associations. … Anthony Chavez of Valley and Jordan Arroyo of Atrisco Heritage both were asked to be preferred walk-ons with the UNM basketball team. … The boys Class 6A state tennis singles champion was 5-foot-1, 87-pound freshman Georgio Samaha of Eldorado.
AZTEC STRONG: The December school shooting at Aztec High School claimed the lives of Marquez, a cheerleading team captain, and Fernandez, a multi-sport athlete.
Two months later, the wrestling team from Aztec, moments after claiming its state championship trophy, gathered in the north end of the Santa Ana Star Center, where wrestlers posed for a picture, with letters spelling out Aztec Strong. It was a terrific moment for the team and their school.
And then at the end of March, at the conclusion of the state spirit championships at the Pit, Jamie Lattin, Marquez’s mother, was brought out to the center of the floor, where her daughter would have been performing that weekend with her squad.
Movingly, everyone in that building gave her a standing ovation.
IN CLOSING: We will present our All-Metro baseball and softball teams next week, plus our overall metro Athletes of the Year, and my choices for AOY in each individual sport.
But otherwise, that’s it for me for now. Have a great summer, everyone.