Brighter lights, improved prospects?
Santa Fe High opens season with better illumination, new scoreboard on field
There was a time when the field at the bottom of Santa Fe High’s campus, the one sandwiched between the baseball facility to the east and the service road leading to the back of Toby Roybal Memorial Gymnasium, was basically an eyesore.
The grass was more cobbled bits of green and mud than it was playable surface. Its inner portion was a matted mess of uneven turf routinely shredded by football practices and soccer workouts.
Then came some capital outlay money, enough to install a new rubber track encircling an artificial turf infield. It was followed by bleachers, a press box and retaining walls with fencing.
Over the course of a dozen years or so, that eyesore became the home of Santa Fe High’s soccer programs and served as complement to the monstrosity that is Ivan Head Stadium just a chip shot to the north.
This summer, construction crews finished installation of the latest significant upgrade: Lights and a new scoreboard. The school had an official grand opening, of sorts, Wednesday night as the boys and girls soccer teams opened their seasons at home against St. Michael’s.
It’s that kind of work that gives boys soccer coach Rob Quirk reason for optimism.
“I think we’d rather have played our games in [Ivan Head] because of the camera angles, the feel of being in the stadium and things like that, but when
you look at everything they’ve done to improve the lower field, it’s hard not to take advantage of that,” Quirk said.
Those incremental improvements have started to make Santa Fe High into a solid bigschool program, one that has fought the good fight the last few years in districts that have included the state’s giants in La Cueva, Eldorado, Sandia, Volcano Vista, Rio Rancho, Cibola and Cleveland.
The Demons took their lumps along the way, but each year they’ve gotten just a little bit better. It started with former head coach A.J. Herrera’s influence in the last few years, then saw Quirk slowly build things back up as the program has increased its win total three straight years.
He returns a club this fall that joins a new district, one that includes reigning Class 6A state champion Albuquerque High and perennial contender Sandia.
“Clearly we’re still the underdogs with those guys, but we’ve been the underdogs for all this time against the big teams we’ve had to play,” Quirk said. “Right now, though, I think we’re feeling better about things.”
The influence of players feeding through the competitive club teams in the Albuquerque area have certainly improved the talent level. At the heart of it is senior striker Matt Hunter, a player who led the Demons’ old district in scoring a year ago.
Same, too, for speed on the outside with senior forward Johnny Manzanares and sophomore Kiran Smelser, two players who can exploit the fast turf surface the improved facility provides in order to add more scoring punch.
Behind it all is a fast and physical defense led by senior goalkeeper Sergio Equino and defensive back Jorge Lozano.
When Quirk looks at all his tools, he admits the biggest question mark moving forward is whether Santa Fe High can get over the hump of so many close-call losses from a year ago to make a run at the revamped Class 5A playoff picture.
The Demons are now in the same district as crosstown rival Capital, a team they haven’t beaten in several years. The Jaguars said goodbye to the program’s most successful coach, Eugene Doyle, leaving Quirk as the elder statesman in a city that appears to be watching a shift in the Demons’ favor.
“We were always scrambling just to stay above water,” Quirk said. “At least now we can feel a little better about things. There are a lot of younger players coming up through junior high that only make this entire thing stronger so, yeah, I feel good about things.”