Jags have blood in their mouths
Capital eager to cleanse 2016’s bitter season with more experienced, ambitious lineup
Bill Moon said there is only one way to know how a football program goes from building — or rebuilding, in this case — to sustaining itself.
“Turn around and look behind you,” said Moon, the sixth-year head coach of the Capital Jaguars.
He is not ready to do it, though. Moon says he still has much to do at Capital, even though he helped the program go from one of the worst in Class 5A to respectability during his second stint running it.
“Never look back unless you have no future,” Moon said. “Somebody else will keep score. You’ll tell me at the end of the year what the win-loss record was. You’ll tell me at the end of the year what my running back did. You will tell me about everything that is behind me.”
What is ahead for Moon and the Jaguars is the 2017 season opener at Roswell Goddard, a team that pounded Capital 61-7 in the 2016 season opener. While Moon is satisfied in leaving the past behind him, the players have not yet forgotten the sour taste of last August’s opener. Nor have they forgotten the tone that loss set for the first half of the season, as the Jaguars went 1-4 and looked nothing like the team that was 7-4 in 2015 and reached the state playoffs for the first time in seven years.
“We were confident that it wasn’t going to be a blowout like it was, so we slacked off,” senior wide receiver Lucas McNatt said. “I’m not gonna lie. We slacked off, thinking we were going to play as hard as they did. We didn’t practice the way we needed to.”
The difference between one good year versus a subpar one came down to experience — or a lack of it. A year ago, Capital needed its senior class to fill holes left behind by a talented graduating class. The juniors were not quite ready for prime time, and the seniors on the squad struggled to lead the team through the first half of the season.
“We didn’t work as a team, then later on in the season, we started coming together,” senior quarterback Cisco Leos said. “We ended
on a four-game winning streak [actually, a three-game winning streak] and started playing well.”
Ah, but there was the rub. At Capital, a 5-5 record is now viewed as subpar. Just a few years ago, a .500 mark was something to celebrate.
“We have expectations,” McNatt said. “Before, it was like, ‘Oh, hey, you guys won that one game.’ Now it’s like, ‘Oh, you won five games. That’s good, but that’s still not good enough for us.’ I don’t think people realized how far we’ve come.”
Moon, though, realizes it. While he is not much to reflect on the past, he sees it as a useful tool in pushing the current crop of Jaguars. Moon recalled his 1993 Capital team that used the motivation of a disappointing 5-5 record in 1992 to carve out a 9-1 record and a district title. Moon remembered the 1992 team faced the expectations of bring one of the top teams in Class 3A, only to listlessly stumble through the season.
“The first day after the season was over, we couldn’t find our players,” Moon said. “[The athletic class] was about to start and they weren’t in the locker room. They were all waiting at the weight room door. That team, in front of the seniors who were still in the class, said, ‘We are not going to let that happen to us.’ ”
Moon used that story to insinuate that this year’s team has a hint of that attitude. While the players weren’t necessarily lining up at the weight-room door that day after the 2016 season was over, the Jaguars showed plenty of initiative in the offseason to put in the time and the work to make 2017 a better one.
Leos and McNatt said the field in the summer was usually full of Jaguars, working out or performing drills.
“Guys who were working during the day and couldn’t be out here with the rest of us, they’d come out here at 6 in the evening and get their work in,” Leos said. “I’d grab some guys, like Lucas or [Leo] Guzman, and we’d work on routes.”
Moon hopes that work ethic and attitude by the 17 seniors on the roster flows through the rest of the team.
“We’re getting there, we’re getting there,” Moon said.
Still, no turnaround is complete without some hardware — something that is missing for the Jaguars. Moon said a benchmark for a good program is to make the playoffs by Year 3 (Capital did it in the fourth year under Moon), a district title by Year 5 (the Jaguars tied with Española in 2015, but the Sundevils had the head-to-head tiebreaker) and be a consistent playoff contender by Year 8.
If Capital can win the 2-5A title this year, it will follow a trend of being a year off of Moon’s marks. But considering the program almost forfeited its season in Moon’s first year in 2012, he feels the program is progressing to his liking.
“We’ve had great kids,” Moon said. “I have a great staff. I’ve got guys who are waiting to get on my staff. I have three guys at Ortiz [Middle School] who are looking for the opportunity to coach here.”
Even though Moon doesn’t want to look back, he can look
to his left and his right and see players and coaches who share his vision.
“We’re just perfecting our craft at practice,” McNatt said.