Living arrangement could cost Pecos basketball its title
Assistant coach sharing a home with player who battled hard times may violate NMAA eligibility rules
The Pecos High School boys’ basketball program is under investigation by the state’s governing body for athletics and activities following a New Mexican story about the 2½-year living arrangement between an assistant coach and a player.
The New Mexico Activities Association is looking into the relationship between Pecos assistant coach Dominick Baca and senior player Carlos Cordova, who have lived together since 2015, Associate Director Dusty Young confirmed.
The investigation comes on the heels of a Thanksgiving Day story in the newspaper that detailed how Baca and Cordova came to live together — first in a single-wide trailer on the property Cordova’s grandfather rented, then through two moves before settling into a four-bedroom mobile home about a mile from the high school.
The arrangement could violate an NMAA eligibility bylaw regarding “Undue Influence of a Student,” which states that a “participant living with coach, principal, teacher, or school official without legal guardianship” could be rendered ineligible for 180 days.
Baca declined to comment about the investigation, but Pecos Independent Schools Superintendent Fred Trujillo said the school filed for a hardship waiver with the NMAA on behalf of Cordova, a senior, to maintain his eligibility. A meeting with the organization’s hardship review committee is set for Dec. 12, Trujillo said.
In the meantime, Trujillo instructed Baca to not participate with the program until a ruling was made on the matter.
Cordova could not be reached by telephone and did not respond to a text message seeking comment.
Trujillo said he feels there was no malicious intent by Baca, the Pecos coaching staff or the school to influence Cordova.
“This decision, as far as with Dominick and Carlos, it was part of an individual helping another individual,” Trujillo said. “Both helped each other get through some tough times in their life.”
Trujillo said that he has heard concerns within the community that if Cordova is ruled ineligible, the NMAA could retroactively declare him ineligible for the prior two seasons and erase all Pecos victories in which the student participated. That would wipe away the Class 3A title Pecos claimed in March — the
program’s first since 1966 for the basketballcrazed town — and the 29-1 record it accumulated during the 2016-17 season.
The Panthers also reached the 3A semifinals in 2015-16 and won district titles both years. Cordova, a 6-foot wing, has played on the Pecos varsity team since he was a freshman.
“I know people initially were thinking about the state championship and the recent success we’ve had,” Trujillo said. “The success of the program is not the main focus for us right now. That’s a decision the NMAA will make. I feel confident that we will do our part in cooperating with the NMAA and we will see a positive decision on the 12th.”
Young declined to comment on the investigation.
Last week’s story recounted how Baca and Cordova came to live together in July 2015 when Baca wanted to move to Pecos after being hired as an assistant coach just a few months earlier.
Cordova had a single-wide mobile home where he and his grandfather, Concepcion Cordova, lived on the outskirts of town until Concepcion died from cancer that summer.
For a time, Carlos Cordova, now 18, said he was thinking about moving to Mexico to live with family.
That changed in 2015, when Cordova said Baca told a group of players, of which he was a part, about wanting to move to town from Santa Fe.
That’s when the youngster, who was living with his mother, Socorro Elena Cordova, offered Baca the house.
“I was just kidding, and I didn’t think he was going to take me seriously,” Carlos Cordova said in an interview last week. “I said, ‘Hey, I have a house, and no one’s living in it right now.’ He said, ‘All right, I’ll look into it.’ Right after practice, when we were leaving, he came up to me and asked, ‘Are you being for real about the house?’ And I told him I was.”
Socorro Cordova said in the story she gave Carlos to her parents to raise after he was born while she moved to Albuquerque to find work. Socorro Cordova, who speaks only Spanish, returned to Pecos after her mother, Maria Elena Perez, died when Carlos was 4, so she could help support her son and dad. Still, it was Concepcion Cordova who raised her son.
Socorro Cordova gave her son permission to live with Baca, saying: “I’m grateful Dominick and Carlos bumped into each other.”
Both Carlos Cordova and Baca said they have developed a close friendship through the years. It began even before they started living together, as Cordova reached out to Baca to talk after Conception died.
“I just started bawling up to this guy, because he was here,” Cordova said in last week’s story. “I was like, ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do.’ And he comforted me, told me everything was going to be OK and something will work out.
“I never cry,” he continued, “but that was the first time I did that in front of somebody.”