Northern New Mexico high school basketball fans have been described as rabid and fanatical. Sometimes I think those terms are extreme, but there’s no denying the excitement basketball generates across the region.
Recently while watching former and present members of the Mesa Vista Trojans boys team hang out and shoot hoops at Mesa Vista High School, I realized what a unifying factor basketball and a high school gym can be to a community.
In the small communities that dot Northern New Mexico, there weren’t and still aren’t a lot of places for children and adults to gather except school and church.
The winters are long and cold. The economies and the culture were land-based and built around the outdoors. Ranching, farming and logging were the primary occupations. Hunting was done in the fall as well and was an essential part of the culture. This combination of weather, culture and work are reasons why basketball is the sport of choice in Northern New Mexico, rather than football.
During football season, there traditionally was still plenty of work that needed to be done. There were crops to gather, hay to cut and stock to move from the mountains to lower pastures. Firewood needed to be cut and stacked, vegetables needed to be to canned and animals needed to be butchered. Football is a sport played outdoors. Snow falls as early as October in Northern New Mexico, so the game was often played in freezing weather.
Basketball is played indoors in a heated building. The fans are seated close to the action and all ages, from the elderly to the very young, can watch it and be warm. You can see friends and families at the games whom you might not normally see and talk about how the team is doing, the weather, their families and whatever else comes to mind. Former players, now parents and grandparents, can remember previous games while watching sons, daughters, nieces, nephews and grandchildren play. The high school gym becomes a place for everyone to meet and for children to hang out. It becomes a focal point of the community.
Things aren’t quite that way at the larger schools anymore. In Española and Pojoaque, the fans in the audience now have jobs in Los Alamos and Santa Fe. The tradition of going to basketball games in the winter continues despite the social changes, only now the crowds measure in the thousands rather than the hundreds. Nevertheless, they still continue to enjoy the sense of community that basketball games generate.
Basketball fans in Northern New Mexico are knowledgeable. They keep me on my toes. I need to know something of the history of teams, tournaments and traditional rivalries, because I can be sure if I get something wrong I’ll hear about it.
This love for high school basketball spans generations in Northern New Mexico and it shows no signs of weakening. It’s as much a part of the culture as green chile and posole.