Escalante High School football coach Dusty Giles gathered his team after its lopsided victory over Pojoaque Valley High School and had just one message of encouragement.
“It’s a lot more fun when you win, right?” he said to the team after two prior blowout losses. “Now, we still got a ton of work to do to get better, but I do think we got better tonight. Alright, we did improve, but we got six more weeks to keep improving before we head into the playoffs.”
There’s no doubt the Sept. 16 road victory against the Elks (1-3) had to feel like day versus night in comparison to the Lobos’ last two outings where they were defeated by a combined 90 points against Bloomfield and Estancia High School.
Quarterback Esteban Archuleta scored five touchdowns and gained 253 yards of total offense and Escalante (2-2) cruised to a 51-18 victory after opening up the game in the second quarter.
“I think before, we were too caught up into, ‘We need to win, we need to win, we need to win,’” Archuleta said. “When things didn’t go our way (the last two weeks) we’d get down on ourselves and shut down completely but tonight we did start a little rough, but we changed our complete mindset and said, ‘No matter who we’re playing, we got to get better’ because anything we do is on us and tonight we did get better.”
Running back Anthony Ulibarri rushed for 123 yards and scored one rushing touchdown on the night through the Lobos’ option attack that the Elks could never stymie. He also added a 30-yard blocked punt return for a touchdown in the second quarter.
“The first half it was all Anthony,” Archuleta said. “He did all the dirty work, so shout out to that guy, but the option was working so well tonight because our offensive line opened it up. Then, all we have to worry about is that one guy (to read).”
Giles even admitted that the Lobos practically ran just one play for a majority of the night, but that was all that was needed to see improvement in the trenches.
“Our offensive line,” he said when asked what worked better against Pojoaque than the previous two weeks. “Our offensive line definitely played better and I mean, we really just ran one play the entire night as far as running the ball goes. Our two-back stuff still needs some work. I think we ran it three or four times and fumbled twice.”
Archuleta tossed three touchdown passes in the second quarter, including one to A.J. Blea (six receptions, 105 yards) and two to Brendon Giles (three receptions, 32 yards), with the second coming with just 7 seconds left in the second quarter, increasing Escalante’s lead to 36-12 at halftime.
Archuleta and Ulibarri both added touchdown runs in the fourth quarter when the game was already out of reach for Pojoaque.
Coach Giles said he was pleased with his team’s ability to execute the speed option so well, saying that the team really needed to go out and execute something to a tee to gain back momentum. Still, the coach just wants more consistency as the weeks roll on.
“Getting better,” he said laughing when asked about what the focus would be moving into Friday’s home matchup against Albuquerque Academy (1-3). “It’s not just one or two things – like I said we’re young – but there’s several areas when we watch the film on Monday will have to improve. I think that’s just our goal for this season: just continue to get better. We got better tonight but we still got a long way to go.”
Pojoaque opened up the game with a strong start on its first possession as Steve Sanchez caught two long balls, including a 22-yard pass from Devonn Leyba-Holmes, but the drive ended in a turnover when Leyba-Holmes was intercepted by Blea in the endzone with Pojoaque threatening.
They would, however, rebound on their second possession after Escalante turned the ball over themselves, fumbling on the option exchange between Archuleta and sophomore running back Isaiah Salazar.
Leyba-Holmes led Pojoaque back down the field and connected with Sanchez on a 27-yard touchdown pass, giving the Elks their only lead of the game at 6-0 with 5:17 left in the first quarter.
“We had some really great things that happened tonight,” Pojoaque head coach Pat Mares said. “Really great things, in-a-row, then we would mess up. Which, everybody makes mistakes and we can’t get down on those mistakes. When we get down, it just unfolds on everybody and we saw that tonight. We can’t expect to win every game, that’s what they (his players) need to understand.”
Mares said he believed the coaching staff prepared the players to stop the Lobos’ option attack, but they just couldn’t execute it on the field. He said the coaching staff will have to adjust and get better moving forward, which they will have to do so on a short week before they host the struggling McCurdy Charter School Bobcats (0-4) 7 p.m., Thursday (9/20).
“It’s gonna be the same focus moving toward next week as it is every week,” Mares said. “Keep trucking, keep doing the same things over and over. Keep instilling what our program is about now and the way our structure and discipline is and keep focusing on that.”