It was a big season for Northern teams
The 2018-19 prep season is over, and it was a banner year for Northern schools. The tally for the year: 14 team champions in eight sports and 31 individual champions who brought home 44 state titles (counting the multiple titles track and field athletes can win). Add to that 12 relay champions — including a clean sweep of all four boys relays by St. Michael’s in the 3A meet — and you have a total of 57 teams or individuals that can attach the word “state champion” to themselves.
Congratulations, one and all.
It was New Mexico’s own version of Carmageddon.
The confluence of several huge events made getting around Albuquerque’s southeast corridor a nightmare Saturday. People on the roads in the late afternoon had to deal with multiple high school championship events at the University of New Mexico, as well as the untold thousands of spectators who headed a few miles south to watch the Kirtland Air and Space Fiesta on the Air Force base.
Just as those crowds were letting out, the 14,000 fans who poured into Isotopes Park for Saturday night’s Mariachis game competed for parking spots
with the 8,000 who streamed into The Pit for the annual Ty Murray Invitational bull riding event.
That wasn’t the only hot spot for traffic congestion, either. With The Pit being taken over all week by the Professional Bull Riders tour, Albuquerque Public Schools had to rent out Tingley Coliseum at Expo New Mexico for its multiple graduation ceremonies. Thirteen schools shuttled several thousand people in and out of the area over the course of six hectic days, some of which dumped huge volumes of cars into the middle of rush hour traffic along Interstate 40 at Louisiana Boulevard.
Speaking of the air show at Kirtland Air Force Base, it created quite a stir for those attending the various high school championship events last week at the UNM sports complex. Thursday’s Class 5A baseball quarterfinal between Volcano Vista and Carlsbad at Santa Ana Star Field was delayed for about 20 minutes when the Thunderbirds, the Air Force Air Demonstration Squadron, conducted a number of ultra-low flybys during rehearsals for Saturday’s show.
The umpire for that game? Las Vegas Robertson graduate Carl Vigil.
How low did the planes get before you decided to delay the game, Carl?
“So close I could tell what kind of bubble gum they were chewing,” he joked while watching his alma mater beat archrival West Las Vegas during Saturday’s Class 3A state championship game, also at Santa Ana Star Field.
Sometimes, the trains don’t run on time, much to the chagrin of Taos’ Faith Powell. What was already a busy Saturday grew more hectic with every minute of waiting. Her day began with the 4A triple jump, which started at 10 a.m. but did not finish until almost 11:30 a.m. — when Powell headed over to the high-jump pit — as some jumpers had to compete in the 400-meter relay finals.
After winning the triple jump with a distance of 36 feet, 7½ inches, Powell and the rest of the high jumpers waited for an hour as other competitors completed their races. She opted to wait until the bar reached 5 feet, 2 inches, before jumping and cleared it on her first try. Powell then cleared 5-4 before having to leave for the 400, finishing in second place.
Visibly tired by this point, Powell could not clear 5-6 but still won the event. However, she lamented how her events suddenly clashed through no fault of her own.
“It was [disconcerting] a little bit,” Powell said. “I had a feeling I was going to have to run the [400, right after the high jump]. but I kept an open mind and did what I had to do.”
In the end, Powell earned the high-point honor with a 32-point total that helped the Lady Tigers to a third-place finish.
Cobre made history Friday in the Class 3A State Softball Tournament. Never before had a team made a run through the entire loser’s bracket to win a state title until the Lady Indians reeled off six straight wins in elimination games to win their 11th championship by sweeping Tularosa, 5-2 and 12-11, but the path was anything but easy.
It almost ended in Cobre’s first game of the loser’s bracket, as it rallied from a 5-1 deficit to Santa Fe Indian School with five runs in the sixth for a 6-5 win. In the loser’s bracket final, West Las Vegas had the Lady Indians down 10-2 heading into the fifth before outscoring the Lady Dons 15-2 the rest of the way for a 17-12 win.
The closest any other team came to pulling off a similar feat came in 2008 with St. Michael’s, which played seven elimination games after losing in the 3A quarterfinals before losing to Bloomfield in the “if ” game. While Cobre played no more than three games in one day, the Lady Horsemen played five games on the final day of the season. They played more games because the tournament was a full 16-team, double-elimination tournament. It is also the closest any Northern softball team has come to winning a state title since McCurdy won the 1A/2A title in 2002.
What has a dozen names, exists in near obscurity outside of Fort Marcy Ballpark and is set to return later this week for another summer of fun? No, not Zozobra. It’s the Pecos League, the independent baseball league whose regular season opens on Friday night with games in Alamogordo and Bakersfield, Calif. The Santa Fe Fuego will not take the field for their season opener until May 30, giving the team a few extra days to get acclimated to the town and the ballpark before opening a four-game homestand against Alpine.