Post-pandemic seasons packed memories
Despite condensed slates, there was no shortage of thrills
Saturday, April 10, as much as any day, defined the staggering weirdness of the spring 2021 prep sports semester in New Mexico.
On the same day, the state was staging fall sports in the form of state soccer finals, winter sports in the form of basketball, and the start of spring sports. That kind of confluence had never before occurred.
Or, maybe it was April 1 that underlined this point with more clarity, with prep football played inside University Stadium, part of a five-games-in-three days “bowl game” experiment by the New Mexico Activities Association in lieu of an actual football postseason.
Or, perhaps it was May 8, with state basketball finals coming seven days after the Kentucky Derby.
What about April 15, when the prep wrestling season was both canceled and reinstated within a few hours of each other?
Probably, it was all of these days and a few others sharing top billing. But cataloging every twist and turn since last summer would be the ultimate tilting-atwindmills exercise.
Most importantly, high school sports went forward during a pandemic. In the metro area, the first competition of 2021, a cross country meet at Bosque School, began on Saturday morning, Feb. 27. When the starter’s pistol went off, it ended a 50-week absence of prep sports in New Mexico.
Nine months of high school sports were crammed into a four-month window. That window shut at 7:23 p.m. on June 26, when Albuquerque Academy won the Class 4A
state baseball tournament at Santa Ana Star Field in a truly magnificent finale.
The fans eventually filtered back, largely in percentages as we all came to familiarize ourselves with how the color health coding of a particular county impacted attendance. Mask-wearing for vaccinated athletes was a continuing sore point. They got to ditch them eventually, but by then the spring seasons were nearly done.
But as we enter the meat of July, and despite all the headaches, there were seasons for every sport and championships for every sport except for football. We should rejoice in that.
Here are some of the broad strokes, and smaller strokes, from the last four months.
FROM WAY (WAY) DOWNTOWN:
There’s no argument to be made. Natalia Chavez’s halfcourt heave — 45 feet, 5½ inches to be precise as measured by a new shot tracking device used at the state tournament, New Mexico being the first state to implement such technology — was the most defining snapshot moment of those four months.
I’m paid to be neutral and quiet when such things happen, and even I almost came out of my chair as Chavez’s ball banked home. A lifelong memory for everyone in the Pit who saw it.
That 3-pointer by Volcano Vista’s junior guard from near midcourt broke an overtime tie with Hobbs at the buzzer and earned the Hawks the Class 5A girls basketball title. This shot will have an indefinite shelf life. For good measure, the next evening, ESPN selected it as the No. 2 play of the day. It even was in contention for an ESPY, for Best Play.
But this was not, it should be noted, the only instance of a sensational play at a state final.
About a month earlier, Lovington’s Lucas Contreras boomed a direct kick from 55 yards straight into the Albuquerque Academy net, forcing a shocking overtime in the Class 4A state final at UNM.
That goal, with 20 seconds left in regulation, was startling. But Lovington didn’t achieve the same ending Volcano Vista did, as the Chargers won 38 seconds into the OT. Then, of course, there was that aforementioned Academy baseball victory, with the Chargers scoring four in the bottom of the seventh to beat archnemesis St. Pius.
And I couldn’t author a recap without mentioning what was, for me, the single most entertaining game (playoffs or regular season): Volcano Vista’s 47-43 victory over Eldorado at Wilson Stadium in mid-March, with the Hawks’ Kaden Valdez returning a kickoff 85 yards for a gamewinning touchdown with 15 seconds left. It was an exhilarating game to experience in person.
ALL BUT ONE: Only football didn’t hand out trophies in the spring, although Cleveland’s 4-0 record and general obliteration of Clovis, Centennial, Rio Rancho and Las Cruces left it believing it was the de facto state champ. Then the Cleveland boys basketball program went out a few weeks later and won its first blue trophy. Del Norte’s boys did the same earlier that day.
COACHING CAROUSEL: There was major coaching news throughout the year.
Lucien Starzynski, architect of Albuquerque High’s spectacular boys soccer program, resigned to take a job with New Mexico United.
Jeremy Maupin, who did wonders with Los Lunas football, resigned to take over his hometown Artesia Bulldogs.
And Dave Barney, he of the 42 state titles in boys and girls swimming/ diving at Albuquerque Academy, called it quits a few months shy of his 90th birthday.
WEIGHT REDUCTION: All the state playoffs in team and individual sports were conducted with fewer state qualifiers in deference to the pandemic.
State basketball was noteworthy in that three teams — the Carlsbad boys, the Pine Hill boys and the Escalante girls — forfeited out of the postseason because of COVID-19 issues before playing.
Another state qualifying team, the Los Lunas girls, gave up a quarterfinal home game against Cleveland. The game was played at Cleveland in order that Tiger fans could attend — they could not have in Los Lunas at the time because of the public health order’s regulations. Los Lunas won in double OT.
Seasons inside Albuquerque Public Schools were in several cases painfully short — three football games, five volleyball and soccer matches.
DARKNESS: COVID-19 beat us down quite a bit, didn’t it? It interrupted seasons, put schools in shutdown, led to numerous athletes being quarantined.
Even before the games began, there were measures of frustration, anger, disappointment and bewilderment, as athletes waited — until January — to find out that high school sports would, in fact, be greenlighted. The pandemic shined light on the mental health of New Mexico’s teenagers, many of whom struggled without the comfort zones of being around their teams or in classrooms.
A handful of athlete suicides shed even more light on the horrible mental and emotional toll the pandemic exacted. A large number of athletes and their families, fed up with the uncertainty of it all, or the decisionmaking from Santa Fe, simply moved out of our state to live and compete in another. Good for them.
But other students stuck around, stood up and pushed back. There were peaceful protests, in cities like Albuquerque and Santa Fe, athletes begging state government leaders along the way to allow them to compete.
Outside of COVID, there were other deaths. Hall of Fame basketball coach Marv Sanders died Dec. 30. The Superintendent of Las Cruces Public Schools, Karen Trujillo, a well-known champion of high school athletics, was struck and killed by a vehicle as she walked her dogs Feb. 25.
On June 30, another Hall of Fame hoops coach, Albuquerque Academy’s Mike Brown, passed away at age 75. His granddaughter, Kennedy, and the Volcano Vista girls basketball team wore special T-shirts honoring Brown during the state tournament, and, touchingly, called him after they won the state title.
A BIG YEAR: Rio Rancho baseball coach Ron Murphy became New Mexico’s all-time winningest coach June 1 with his 582nd career victory. Earlier in the year, Murphy was honored as a national coach of the year for the 2019-20 school year by the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS).
THIS AND THAT:
Magdalena guard Joren Mirabal went on social media the day after the Steers won the Class 1A state basketball title and said he had played in the final on a broken foot. … Two-time Olympian Shelia Burrell was among the first members of Rio Grande High’s Hall of Fame. … In softball, Rio Rancho High’s Kionna King hit five homers in one day, vs. Aztec and Valencia. … Carlsbad softball coach John Tigert won his 600th career game with the Cavegirls and retired after the season. … Cleveland baseball coach Shane Shallenberger got career win No. 300. … Georgio Samaha of Eldorado became the third boy to win at least three state tennis singles titles in the state’s largest classification; the Albuquerque Academy boys tennis team won its 18th straight blue trophy. … Sandia’s volleyball and Hope Christian softball team were among those programs that didn’t play a spring 2021 season. … With no fans allowed indoors, many schools took their wrestling matches outdoors to football stadiums. … The Hope Christian boys won their first state cross country title, finishing 1-2-3 as the Huskies became first school other than Academy or Los Alamos to win state in the state’s second-largest class in 24 years. … Jal football’s Roger Carreon, possibly the state’s hottest recruit, committed to Boise State.