Great start to the season leaves this sports editor tongue tied, full of number comparisons
The start of the 2018-19 season has produced a nice surprise for Taos Tiger fans.
The Taos Tigers football and boys soccer teams are both undefeated, have earned an enormous amount of points, and are both sitting in first place in the state in their respective divisions. The fortuitous winning streaks have placed the two squads on interesting parallel tracks – fit for a bullet train.
When the New Mexico Activities Association contracted from six classes to five and realigned teams by school population (past changes have occurred on the basis of parity or geography), Taos High School was selected to “move up” and join larger schools in a revised class 4A. As the new districts and classes were made public, there was concern the move would affect our athletic teams negatively. Surely bigger schools must mean bigger, tougher sports teams and less of a chance for Taos to be competitive.
So far, that calculus hasn’t played out with these two particular sports. In fact, the exact opposite has happened.
The football team is coming off a 49-0 drubbing of a class 5A team and has yet to face a serious challenge from any opponent so far. Class 5A Los Alamos also failed to produce any points and lost by a similar score, 47-0.
The other teams Taos played against could not keep pace and yielded a ton of touchdowns field goals and two-point conversions. The result is stockpile of 218 points garnered against 45 allowed in only four games. No other school in the state comes close to that differential.
As for the soccer team, a similar comparison can be made about their ability to score and their stinginess. In the seven games to start the 2018 campaign, the Tigers have made 45 goals and given up just five (Taos played class 5A Santa Fe after this section went to press Sept. 18, so outcome and stats from that game were not known).
Again, such a differential does not exist at any level in the whole state. If futbol goals were counted the same as American football touchdowns, the soccer team would have accrued a total of 270 points and given up just 30.
See the similarities?
And while this streak may or may not last, it sure is nice to talk about. In fact, the repeated outcomes sometimes leave one speechless. During a post game interview with football coach Art Abreu Jr., I had no idea what to ask. He said it was ok because he didn’t know what to say.
It was simply great.