Football in the air
High school football is just around the corner, as teams begin practices
We are eight months removed from a historic showdown, which automatically means that this will be an exceedingly difficult encore for high school football in Albuquerque.
The 2018 prep football season officially begins today as everyone takes the field.
Last December, Manzano and La Cueva combined for the first allAlbuquerque state final in the history of this state.
In 17 days, we will start anew, with Cibola-Sandia, and Rio Grande-Highland.
With today’s preview of Highland, we have looked at 11 of the 25 teams in the metro area, with the rest to come over the next couple of weeks. And I’ll count down my selection of the top five as we inch closer to Aug. 23. What does this season hold in store? Many things. First and foremost, there is Manzano’s title defense, with a new coach (Phillip Martinez) inheriting a team that was undefeated a year ago. No public school in this city, other than La Cueva, had won a football championship in nearly 30 years before the Monarchs last season.
I remain hopeful that Manzano’s surge proves to be a beacon for its APS compadres. But perhaps more interestingly, will the South respond to what is current and vivid supremacy by the North? (There was a day not long ago when it would have been inconceivable to think such a thing, let alone write such a sentence.) But five of the last seven big-school state champs were undefeated teams from the metro area.
Meanwhile, the state’s schools have been juggled in a massive realignment overhaul by the New Mexico Activities Association. Teams going up and down, teams going independent, re-shuffling the classes and districts … it’s a complex thing with many moving parts. I’ll be explaining all of it in an upcoming story. No need to get into all that today.
There was relatively little turnover on the coaching front in the offseason, and in fact things were going along pretty quietly until Manzano’s Chad Adcox suddenly dropped his bomb that he was stepping down in May.
Martinez, the defensive coordinator for the Monarchs, was promoted on an interim basis for 2018. These are almost impossibly large shoes to fill for Martinez. Or anyone, really.
Anthony Ansotigue was an assistant at Eldorado, and is one of the other two new coaches in the metro area as he takes over at West Mesa, which was a playoff team last season. Wes Shank, who did a fantastic job at Miyamura High in Gallup, is the new man at Valencia where the Jaguars want to try to close the considerable
gap that exists between them and Belen/ Los Lunas.
Those new coaches will get their first true gauge of their teams during scrimmages next week. The most interesting of them will be Artesia’s visit to Wilson Stadium to take on La Cueva. I’ve got all the scrimmage times/dates/ sites and I’ll post an item in a week or so running them down.
Who are the most elite players from the metro area? We identified many of them in Sunday’s edition, in case you missed it.
Even as the city seems to be in a position of strength, not all is healthy with Albuquerque’s DNA. To wit: Rio Grande and Albuquerque High both are going independent for the next two years. So is Albuquerque Academy, though this is less significant than the decision made by AHS and Rio Grande.
As a sidebar, the Ravens badly want to end their 37-game losing streak and should have several decent chances to do that during the next several months.
Highland and Valley, as you probably already have heard, are no longer Class 6A football programs. Both are in the 5A division this year. It’s for the best.
At any rate, the Journal will continue to pound away with advance coverage leading up to Aug. 23. I rather enjoyed APS taking that Wednesday night to officially kick off the prep season, and I for one am sorry that’s gone away.
But I do commend APS for this: they have stopped cramming everyone into Nusenda Community Stadium in Week 1, and we’ll have multiple games at all three city facilities that first week.
We’ll get to all that eventually, and plenty more, between now and Aug. 23. For now, it’s football season. And that’s such a happy day.