Friday, not night, no lights: St. Michael’s playing Shiprock at 3 p.m. today
Horsemen play rare afternoon game today to accommodate a Shiprock cultural fair
There’s matinees at the movie theaters, happy hour at the bars … and afternoon football on a weekday at St. Michael’s.
That’s the situation Friday afternoon when the Horsemen play an ultra-rare weekday game in the sun against Shiprock. Kickoff is scheduled for 3 p.m. at Christian Brothers Athletic Complex.
The game was moved from its original Saturday afternoon slot of 1:30 to accommodate the visiting Chieftains. Their head coach, Mike
Switch, called Horsemen head coach Joey Fernandez last week to ask for the earlier date because most players on the Shiprock roster are planning to take part in a fair back home celebrating Indian culture.
“There’s a lot of rituals and religious things the players are going to be doing with their families, so it’s a pretty big deal,” Switch said. “We’re not having school [Friday] and there’s no classes on Monday.”
Without the move, Switch said he might not have enough players to field a team.
“It’s an important thing to the community and, yeah, I needed to do whatever I could to take care of the people we’re involved with,” he said. “Some people might think I was making it up for some sort of advantage, but no — we needed this.”
Off to an 0-5 start, the Chieftains need all the help they can get. They’ve been shut out in each of their last three games and have been outscored by an average of 49.6 points per contest as the injuries have mounted. The team lost its starting quarterback and basically has had to scrap its spread in favor of a more conservative one-back set. “It hasn’t been pretty,” Switch said. Even in the best of situations, it’s not exactly ideal for a team that is playing this season as an independent — just one of four teams across the state (and the only one outside Albuquer-
que) to be doing so.
It hasn’t been all tulips and smiles at St. Michael’s, either. As creatures of habit, coaches and players don’t like it much when their routines get thrown off — even for the best of intentions.
“It’s been a weird week,” Fernandez said. “Everything about it has been a little off, a little different. The practices haven’t been great and just the idea of playing a game in the afternoon when everyone’s at work and most of the kids are still in school is kind of strange.”
For now, the coaching staff is trying as hard as it can to keep things as status quo as possible. The pregame ritual is off just a little; the team will be dismissed from class at noon so it can eat together in the cafeteria, then get ready for the game.
When kickoff arrives, the rest of the students will still have another 30 minutes of classes before the final bell. A good portion of the parents will still be stuck at work.
“It’s going to be kind of weird to see what it’s like,” said Horsemen senior receiver Luke Kastendieck when asked about it after last week’s game at Santa Fe High. “I don’t think it really matters, but we’ll be ready.”
The Horsemen (2-3) have won two straight after starting the season with three blowout losses. With Santa Fe Indian School on the schedule next, they’re just two weeks away from the meat of the District 2-3A slate that features the first of back-to-back games against West Las Vegas and Las Vegas Robertson.
A prohibitive favorite on Friday, the Horsemen will finally be at full strength in most positions. Back from injury is running back Derek Roybal. He and Alejandro Talamantes have been the feature backs most of the way — but rarely at the same time since both have had their own health issues to deal with.
“We’re starting to get our running game back so you’ll probably see us mixing in more and more of it as we go,” Fernandez said. It all starts Friday. Under the weekday sunlight. For the first time in — well, as long as anyone can remember.
“I know I’ve never really had anything like this,” Switch said. “Maybe when I was back in Oklahoma and there was a game or two played the day after Thanksgiving.”
“But never,” added Fernandez, “on a weekday in the middle of the season. It’s just different, you know?”