Pojoaque Valley clobbers Santa Fe Indian School
Pojoaque blasts Santa Fe Indian School 64-12 as running back scores six touchdowns in rout
Dominic Esquibel is big and fast.
And best of all, he’s back in Pojoaque. Esquibel, a 6-foot-2, 225-pound senior running back, spent the previous eight years in Colorado before returning to his Northern New Mexico roots. And what a homecoming it’s been so far this season. He continued to make his imprint on the football scene Friday night when he torched Santa Fe Indian School for 351 rushing yards and six touchdowns as Pojoaque manhandled the Braves 64-12 in a nondistrict football game at Jacona Field.
The return had much more to do with unfinished business with his fellow teammates, with whom he played in the Northern New Mexico Youth Football League until he was 9 years old and moved to Littleton, Colo. After spending the past three years playing at Columbine High School, Esquibel felt the tug of friends and family trying to bring him home. So far, he hasn’t regretted the move as he has accumulated 500 rushing yards and 10 touchdowns, and it’s just the second week of the season.
“The chemistry [the upperclassmen] have is something that nobody else has,” Esquibel said. “It’s something that has brought us a long way.”
That might not have been evident on the Elks’ first offensive play of the game. The night started off well on the defensive end as Pojoaque linebacker Andres Martinez sacked SFIS quarterback Andres Coriz on the second play and knocked the ball away for D’Sean Martinez to recover at the SFIS 12-yard line. But an errant snap got past Pojoaque junior quarterback Adam Pacheco and Esquibel had to chase it down. He ran 10 yards to make the best of a bad situation, since it ended up being a loss of 10 yards on the play.
The play was quickly forgotten as Esquibel churned through the Braves defense with runs of 12 and 10 yards to score the first touchdown with 10:04 left in the first quarter. A 2-point conversion made it 8-0.
By the end of the quarter, Esquibel had 91 yards on the ground. He broke the 100-yard barrier by the second minute of the second quarter.
When the half ended, Esquibel had 231 rushing yards, four touchdowns and the Elks (2-0) were up 50-12.
He ended the night for both teams when he stormed up the middle, blasted through a Braves defensive back, then raced untouched down the right sideline for an 81-yard touchdown. It capped a special performance in the third quarter as the game ended due to the 50-point mercy rule.
Pojoaque head coach Pat Mares, who coached the Pojoaque youth team before taking over the high school program four years ago, said Esquibel’s presence gave the offense the missing ingredient he had been searching for the previous three seasons.
“We’ve had some athletes who can run the ball at certain times, but never had the full, complete package,” Mares said. “We had the speed, but didn’t have the power. We had the power, but didn’t have the speed. Now, we have both in one person and we have to utilize that to the best of our abilities.”
Esquibel’s performance became more important because the elements put a dent in the Elks’ offensive game plan. Mares said he believes he has the best group of receivers in the state, but a crosswind that gusted to as much as 46 mph prevented Pacheco from using that group as much as he wanted. Pacheco went 5-for-11 for 91 yards and threw for two touchdowns. He could have had a third, but a clipping infraction turned a 73-yard touchdown to Martinez into a 21-yard gain.
All it did was set Esquibel up for a 42-yard touchdown run two plays later to make it 50-12 with 35 seconds left in the half.
Pacheco expressed some frustration about the wind, but he said having a back like Esquibel to turn to in those situations can take some of the pressure off of him.
“It just makes us that much more explosive, it gives us more options,” Pacheco said. “Like in this wind, we just went to our running game. It was frustrating, though.”
With a 2-0 record, it marks the first time in a decade the Elks have gotten off to such a start. The 116 points the team has scored in those two games is the second most in program history, trailing the 133 points the Elks scored to open the 2009 season.
Mares warned his team in the post-game discussion not to get too excited about its performance. He pointed out that he wants the Elks to continue to build upon their success each week and not get caught up in the euphoria of victory.
One thing he pointed out that Pojoaque did poorly was limiting mistakes. Esquibel fumbled twice and SFIS (1-1) recovered one of them. A miscue on a trick play on fourth down in the second quarter gave SFIS the ball at the Pojoaque 12. The Braves took advantage of a pass interference call to score its lone offensive touchdown — a 1-yard plunge by running back Taylor Torivio for a 34-6 deficit at the 5:21 mark.
Fenyx Morningdove also wreaked havoc on kickoffs as he scored on an 86-yard return after Esquibel scored his third touchdown for a 40-12 margin with 3:15 to go. In the third quarter, Morningdove had a 34-yard kickoff return that put the ball at the Pojoaque 43.
“We can’t be making those mental mistakes against better teams,” Mares said. “Good teams will take advantage of that.”