Volcano Vista looking to take unbeatens down

Talented Hawks enjoying role as Class 6A underdog

Volcano Vista football, circa 2018: A 4 seed, but hardly a fifth wheel.

“A lot of people didn’t believe in us at first,” said Jake Deatherage, quarterback of the Hawks. “It’s motivation to prove everybody wrong — for ourselves.”

The narrative of this Class 6A football season has largely centered around the state’s three undefeated teams, those being Cleveland, La Cueva and Centennial.

The Hawks (9-2), if they want to win a first football championship, will have to go through two of those three in the next two weeks. In Friday’s semifinals, No. 4 Volcano Vista takes on No. 1 Cleveland (11-0) in Rio Rancho at 7 p.m.

“What I like about this team is, they meet every challenge,” said Hawks coach Chad Wallin. “They can beat these teams.”

And therein lies the proverbial turkey leg of the conversation.

While Volcano Vista clearly is enjoying its most prosperous season since the school’s

first football game in 2008, the Hawks’ name and brand haven’t exactly been rolling off everyone’s tongue the last three months.

“Love it,” Wallin said. “Gives us fuel for the kids. We like the fact that we quietly go about doing our business.”

It’s not that there isn’t some cause for skepticism. Volcano Vista lost opening night to La Cueva, and then was beaten in District 1-6A by Cleveland.

There are solid wins up and down the schedule, but no signature wins. The crux of it is this: Volcano Vista can play with any team in the state. But circling back to what Wallin said, can the Hawks beat those teams now, on this stage?

It starts with trying to solve Cleveland, a team that put up 61 points on the Hawks in the regular season. (Think ChiefsRams, on a prep level. That best describes that evening.)

“In a way, they’re more dangerous now, because we don’t know what’s coming,” said junior linebacker Brandon Padilla, a reference to injured Storm tailback Dorian Lewis.

In the first game last month, Cleveland’s offense was the hot knife through Volcano Vista’s butter on defense in a 61-46 victory.

“We’re gonna be ball hungry,” Padilla said. “We’re not gonna give up something big.”

Bold, to be sure, but the Hawks believe they can take Cleveland down. The Storm led the first game by just eight points in the final minutes and was pinned inside its 10. Cleveland went on a long drive to seal things at the end.

That loss, and the La Cueva loss, leaves Volcano Vista as the fourth pick among the four teams remaining for a blue trophy.

“We’re still the underdogs. We’ve been the underdogs all year,” Deatherage said. “But no team will take us lightly.”

This is Volcano Vista’s third time in the state football semifinals, but just the second time in the largest division. The last time the Hawks had a Thanksgiving Day practice, as they will this morning, was 2012, when they fell to a powerhouse Sandia team in the semis.

Wallin said there have been several lost seasons between 2013 and this one, something he says falls on him as the head coach.

But going back to the middle of the summer, Wallin was fully convinced even then that the Hawks — always among the state’s most talented squads — had discovered a new, fresher team dynamic, had purged some of the elements that might have been holding them back in the month of November, and were poised to make a playoff push.

Volcano Vista’s team speed is second to none in 6A, and the Hawks were the second-highest scoring team in the division behind Cleveland.

Friday night, the Hawks have a chance for the most important victory in the decade-long history of the program.

“In my mind, I believe it, and in the kids’ minds, they believe it,” Wallin said about their potential to win two more games this weekend and next. “And that’s half the battle. They play like they have something to prove, which is something we haven’t had.”