By Glen Rosales
The high school football landscape will look a lot different for the local teams under the New Mexico Activities Association’s most recent realignment for the upcoming two-year block.
Rio Rancho and Cleveland high schools – as always – will be lumped together, but now the two perennial Class 6A championship contenders are part of District 1 with Cibola, Volcano Vista and the Four Corners schools Farmington and Piedra Vista.
In 4A, however, Bernalillo athletic director Ira Harge Jr., said he’s quite satisfied with the results that created two districts of the 15 teams.
Meanwhile, 6A’s District 2 has eight teams, including Westside schools West Mesa and Atrisco Heritage, either of which could have easily been switched into District 1 to create three, seven-team districts.
Matt Martinez, Cleveland athletic director, is none too pleased about the change as it leaves District 1 schools with five out-of-district slots to fill on the schedule and all of the schools scrambling to fill the vacancies.
“We were disappointed with the way the football came out,” he said. “It affected the Rio Rancho schools and the Farmington schools with six teams in District 1, eight teams in District 2 and seven teams in District 3.”
Rio Rancho athletic director Sal Gonzales was unavailable for comment.
Cleveland appealed the proposal, seeking three balanced districts of seven teams or even two districts of 10 and 11 schools.
The NMAA board of directors, however, rejected the appeal.
“Through the Classification and Alignment process, we try to keep schools in the same district for all sports,” said Sally Marquez, NMAA executive director. “So, although we have more classes in football, schools that are in the same classification are also in the same football district.”
Still, Martinez was not mollified, especially since the Storm had to play two teams from Texas, as well as 5A power Artesia the last two seasons.
“It’s put us in the same spot where we were before in the last two-year block,” Martinez said. “We had to find games out of New Mexico; in Texas. Right now, we’re lacking one game, where we can’t find a game in New Mexico for weeks five or six.”
The Storm has already scheduled games with Centennial and Las Cruces, as well as Los Lunas and Clovis for the first four weeks of the season, but because 5A has been split into two eight-team districts, Artesia already will be into district play by week five so the Bulldogs are unavailable.
And that means another out-of-state foray.
“We’re open to see what we find in Texas, Colorado or Arizona,” Martinez said. “But a lot of those states don’t do realignment until the springtime. So we’re kind of stuck. At this point, we have nine games. We’ll get the 10th, but we don’t know where.”
For the Spartans, it will be plenty of travel as the closest school will be Moriarty, 53 miles away. The district also will include Grants, Española Valley and Taos – all at least 70 miles distant — as well as Four Corner schools Kirtland Central, Bloomfield and Aztec.
Bernalillo, however, will no longer have to travel south, Harge noted, which is a good thing because the road trips are even longer.
“Going up north is a little easier for us than heading south because we to have to spend the night when we go down south,” he said. “And the competition in the north is getting good, really good. Of course, the southern competition has always been good.”