Twice as proud
The Rio West area can tip its cap to two football champs.
In afternoon games last Saturday, Rio Rancho High’s Rams defeated visiting Las Cruces, 39-17, to claim the Class 6A state title, while St. Pius’ Sartans bested Artesia, 34-24, in the Class 5A championship matchup at Nusenda Community Stadium.
Journal reporter James Yodice writes about Rio Rancho’s Josh Foley and St. Pius’ Drew Ortiz, two “unforgettable talents” on the teams,
Atime will come soon when yours truly will have to sit down and address the following question: Who was the prep football player of the year in the metro area?
There are, obviously, only two possibilities. Option A is Drew Ortiz. Option B is Josh Foley. Eventually, I will have to settle on one of them as the metro’s POY for this recently completed season.
As I do every school year for the Journal, I select a top overall athlete in every sport. We announce those 19 winners — who are chosen from the nearly 30 schools we classify as part of the metro area — after the school year ends, in late May.
Often, there are multiple worthy candidates. Happens all the time, actually.
But this particular decision may be the toughest yet.
How do you choose between these two?
Ortiz, the St. Pius senior quarterback, combined for 60 touchdowns in 13 games — 38 passing, 22 rushing — and accounted for over 4,000 total yards for the Sartans, who last weekend beat Artesia to earn a Class 5A state title.
Foley, the Rio Rancho tailback, rushed for nearly 2,100 yards for the Rams, and caught about another 500 yards in passes. He scored 41 total touchdowns for Rio Rancho. Both are immensely qualified. Whichever way I go, their individual numbers will only be a portion of the equation I use to pick the POY. There are a handful of intangibles that also go into this process.
But … let us put that comparison aside for now.
As long as they play football at St. Pius, and as long as they play football at Rio Rancho, these two names deserve to live on for generations.
Foley and Ortiz were unforgettable talents. It was a privilege to watch them do their thing, and come next August, they will be missed.
But their legacies at their schools are cemented.
Forever.
TWO PLUS TWO: Strangely enough, not a single football coach among the 24 that we cover in the metro area had multiple state championships to his name. Until seven days ago. Then David Howes and San Juan Mendoza joined that club within minutes of each other.
Howes got his second with Rio Rancho. Ditto Mendoza with the Sartans. Howes is 43. Mendoza is 47. Howes, who just finished his eighth season as Rams head coach, may yet win others. Rio Rancho has a supremely healthy program.
But after St. Pius beat Artesia a week ago at Nusenda Community Stadium, Mendoza retired.
After 21 seasons as head coach for St. Pius, an emotional Mendoza went out the way coaches only dream about going out.
St. Pius’ 34-24 victory over Artesia was a spectacular bookend to the first title he was a part of with the Sartans, in 1999, when he was still so young and finding his footing as a head coach.
Mendoza in more recent years endured some frustrating times on the West Side. That certainly made this farewell even more special than even he could have imagined.
Is it possible he may come back and coach again someday? Sure. But I sort of like the idea of that being his last game. That would give his career closure.
Mendoza had a wonderful career with St. Pius. And as he leaves football — but not the school, where he is Dean of Students — the program has reclaimed some of that glory it had going back to the glory days of coach Ray Giannini.
Sure, some of the luster of the program had been chipped away through the end of the last decade and into the first several years of this one.
Now the Sartans have a blue trophy.
And the program once again shines.
Like St. Pius gold.