Calexico admin churn leaves Holtville holding bag

As of right now, there is a hole in the Holtville Varsity football schedule. A hole where once there was not.

A game had been scheduled for Sept. 21 at Calexico High’s Ward Field, pitting the Vikings against the Bulldogs in a non-league matchup, but as it stands, this game highly unlikely to be played.

This is because Calexico, unbeknownst to themselves, had another game scheduled for that same date at a venue about 60 miles to the west.

Holtville Athletic Director CJ Johnston was the first to notice this anomaly.

He had gone to great lengths to schedule Calexico as part of his initiative to spruce up the Vikings non-league slate by including local teams that were in a higher CIF-SDS division to give his school a proving ground while sticking to their own backyard (an initiative that included a revival of the IV Classic against Imperial, which takes place tomorrow).

Johnston said he had initially approached Calexico about a possible match as early as the end of the 2016 season, speaking with thenAD Chris Lopez. These things can take some time to come together, but Johnston said he was persistent, staying in touch with the department over several months, trying to nail down a date.

Eventually, he was successful. Early in 2018, he received written confirmation from the Calexico Athletic Department, and the September game was marked down in the schedule.

But as the season drew nearer, Johnston was alerted to the fact that his was not the only school planning to play Calexico that day. The other? Kofa High School out of Yuma.

Confused, Johnston brought this bit of news to the attention of the folks at Calexico who were… also confused.

The problem was that — over the course of his solicitation of this matchup from Calexico — the athletic department there turned over more than once. While his initial talks had been with Lopez, the man he received a commitment from was Raymond Alvarado, the current Calexico AD — and there had been a couple of inbetweeners, too.

Alvarado — who has a long history in athletic administration, having previously been AD at Calexico for 20-plus years before stepping down back in 2003 — was brought in to steady things after a period of choppy water. Unaware of any conflicts, he was glad to put an extra home game in what appeared to an empty space in the schedule.

When he became aware of the conflict, he did some digging, and it was revealed a commitment had in fact been made to Kofa prior to his coming aboard, but it hadn’t been properly recorded.

This has left all three schools in an awkward position. The stance that both Calexico and Kofa have taken is that the earlier commitment takes precedence, and while this is unfortunate for Calexico (in that it stands to lose a home game), it is the least convenient for Holtville, which now has to scramble to find a replacement game with the season already underway.