HUNGRY HORSEMEN
Horsemen eager to get back in the race, put heartbreaking quarterfinal loss behind them
After last year’s early exit, St. Michael’s has something to prove
Well, that as a long nine months. Excruciating, in fact. Nothing makes the days tick by longer quite like falling flat on your face when it matters most. The St. Michael’s football team knows all about this, having entered last year’s Class 4A playoffs as the No. 1 overall seed only to lose in the quarterfinals to a heavy underdog from down south.
As the Horsemen spent the following two weeks turning in uniforms and dealing with the emotional torment of a shockingly early exit, one of their district rivals advanced to the state championship game while everyone dismissed their own work as a sham.
“Yeah, that was a long offseason,” says Derek Roybal, a junior who basically epitomizes what it was to be a St. Michael’s football player in the three quarters of a year since that November loss.
Penciled in as one of the two starting running backs, Roybal short-circuited his sophomore season with off-the-field issues that kept him from reaching his prime. All he’s done since is find the discipline to become a good teammate and stay out of trouble, doing whatever it takes to stay on the field.
The Horsemen have done the same, working harder than ever to finish the business they thought was theirs for the taking last fall. When head coach Joey Fernandez talks about Roybal, he might as well be talking about his program’s approach since last season.
“Derek’s one of those kids that needs somebody to guide him a little bit,” Fernandez said. “He’s coming along good and he knows exactly what he needs to do and he just needs to, you know, keep his nose clean.”
Truth is, last year’s Horsemen had holes. Not a single running back rushed for 400 yards and the team was outscored in the fourth quarter despite an average winning margin of nearly 19 points. When yards were needed in crunch time, there was no clear answer.
Who becomes that player this fall remains to be seen. Roybal and fellow senior Alejandro Talamantes will get the bulk of the carries as running backs, but they’re hardly the only weapons at Fernandez’s disposal. With 26 lettermen back on a roster that carries 47 players, the team’s greatest strength is its speed.
Several of the top skill guys ran on the track team’s sprint relays last spring, but the one player mentioned above all others in
terms of afterburners is receiver Hayden Lee. Also a member of the school’s soccer team, he forms a formidable pass-catching corps that includes flanker Luke Kastendieck and tight end Jake Tupler.
They’ll play behind a line that features one of the strongest players in school history, left tackle Tayo Regenold. He set three school records in the weight room this offseason and, at 291 pounds, is one of the most intimidating players in Class 3A this season.
Behind it all is new quarterback Dominic Morgan. A backup for three years, he will start at QB and linebacker.
“This year my expectations are to do what I do well, which is reading things and getting the ball downfield and letting these guys do the work,” Morgan said. “It’s one of those things I know I can do. I’m not asked to do that much in this offense.”
Fernandez wasn’t sold on Morgan when preseason camp began. Just a few weeks ago, it was a battle as he and 6-foot-3 freshman Lucas Coriz were indistinguishable on the depth chart. While Coriz is clearly the QB of the future, Morgan won out by both managing the game and doing the little things to extend plays and be accurate under pressure.
“We feel good about what Dominic can do,” Fernandez said. “This team, we don’t have a lot of strong vocal leaders. That’s one of those things we hope comes out over the course of the first few weeks.”
The Horsemen have dropped down to District 2-3A in the latest shift in alignment and classification. They’ll be in familiar surroundings, however, as traditional rivals West Las Vegas and Robertson are in the same district, as are Santa Fe Indian and Raton. Gone from 3A is defending 4A champ Ruidoso, which remains in the higher class with perennial powers like Portales, Moriarty, Silver, Lovington, St. Pius and Taos.
The tests come early for St. Michael’s, with four straight games away from home. Following this weekend’s home opener, the Horsemen won’t be back to campus until October.
“I thought about that when putting the schedule together,” Fernandez said. “I figured if we’re going to be in the playoffs, we might as well get used to traveling and playing on the road.”
Milestone man: Saturday’s season opener against Taos will be the 200th game for Fernandez as head coach at his alma mater. He is 146-53 with 16 trips to the playoffs, five appearances in the championship game and three state titles to his credit.
His teams have won at least nine games nine
different times, including last year’s club that entered the playoffs as the top overall seed.
Two-toned look: The Horsemen have slightly altered their helmet design this year, going with a Jacksonville Jaguars-themed look in which the back third of each player’s lid is white. It fades into metallic royal blue as it approaches the crown, giving the helmet a blue-in-the-front, white-in-the-back appearance.
It’s the first major helmet redesign since Fernandez switched from white to blue for the 2003 season.
Uni-watch: While we’re at it, more uniform news. The Horsemen will wear white jerseys and pants for Saturday’s opener while visiting Taos will wear black. It’s the first time St. Mike’s has worn white for a home game — minus the “home” date it has every other year at Santa Fe High — in memory.
St. Michael’s ordered new blue jerseys but not all of them are in yet. Fernandez called Taos coach Art Abreu about the switch and Abreu happily obliged because, as it turns out, the Tigers have new white road jerseys that hadn’t come in yet.