The McCurdy football team will have to contend with mismatched helmets, a beat-up field, and finding players to play for perhaps the first time. But in spite of the challenges, Bobcats football will be back this fall.
“We have not had a competitive snap in three years,” said coach Robert Nevarez. “And there’s a lot of desire.”
Later this month, McCurdy’s football team will take the field for the first time since 2018, with a team of almost entirely new players taking on district strongholds as they look to reestablish the school’s football program.
Nevarez said there is only one senior on the roster made up mostly of sophomores and juniors looking to contribute.
He is excited about the athleticism of the team, with plenty of multi-sport athletes from the school’s winning basketball and baseball teams.
“They all come here in shape,” he said. “The football IQ, and the development from a football perspective, that’s what we’re lacking. That’s what we’re having to work on.”
Practices focus on the basics, learning tackling and blocking fundamentals and getting the feel of wearing pads and helmets. Most of the players have not played competitive football since middle school, if ever. Nevarez will then spend lots of time working on offense and defense formation and plays.
On one of the first days of practice, he said the rain forced them to stay inside. But this was “a blessing in disguise” as they spent two hours focusing on offense.
Athletic talent
One of those multi-sport stars is Markus Martinez. The junior is currently nursing a sprained ankle, but is expected to be the team’s starting quarterback by week one. Martinez was a two-way leader for a Bobcats baseball team that dominated the district, while he put his name atop statewide stat leaderboards.
“He’s just a great overall athlete,” Nevarez said. “For him, it’s more of just learning the X’s and O’s. Because he’s got the athleticism already.”
In the meantime, while Martinez attends practice in street clothes and lightly tosses a football with some teammates, juniors Casey Nevarez and Jolen Montoya have taken a leadership role in drills. Nevarez, Robert’s son, will be the team’s running back and Montoya the fullback.
Freshman Jeremaya Roybal was impressive with his speed and quickness, and is likely in line for a starting role.
Defensive coach Mel Martinez is installing a “2-5” base defense, with just two down linemen and a variety of stunts and blitzing packages. He said this is the best way to utilize the team’s speed against opponents that will likely be bigger on the offensive line.
The team will not have a lot of size, but they can make up for it in speed and athleticism.
“Our best bet is getting speed and getting out of that hole quick,” Montoya said.
The summer two-a-days are drawing 20 to 25 athletes, though participation can be lower in the afternoon when some have to work jobs, such as the lone senior, Joey Fernandez. Robert Nevarez said he expects to add more after the first day of school Aug. 16., and he hopes to have up to 30 players.
District rivalries renewed
The Bobcat season is scheduled to start Aug. 27 with a road game at New Mexico Military Institute. A four-hour bus ride to face a tough 3A program will certainly be a challenging “welcome back” for the school’s first game in over 34 months.
“We go into bad boy country right off the bat,” Nevarez said. “And we don’t even know what we have yet.”
Their first home game will be the Sept. 4 on a Saturday afternoon against Questa, though that does not count as a district game and the two will rematch further north in October.
Currently, the first week of the football calendar is McCurdy’s bye week, though there is a chance for a readjustment in the schedule. But Nevarez is happy about that scheduling giving his team an extra week to prepare for the season.
McCurdy’s division this year includes Escalante, Estancia, Questa and Laguna Acoma. It’s the Lobos, the mainstay at the top of the division and a multi-time state champion, that the players have the most anticipation to face.
“I want to play Escalante,” Casey Nevarez said, and teammates agreed. “They’re probably our rivals right now.”
“We always circle Escalante, no matter what sport it is,” Robert Nevarez said.
That game will come October 16 at home, one week before finishing the regular season at home against Laguna for homecoming.
“People think that they’ll have a piece of cake with us, beating us,” quarterback Martinez said. “But I think we’ll be tough this year.”
Back to basics
McCurdy last had a winning season in 2012. They were state champions in 1962 and 1976, but that feels far removed for a school whose identity now feels far more tied to basketball or baseball.
The 2019 season was canceled for a variety of reasons including academic ineligibility of many athletes, and McCurdy did not field a team for a shortened 2020 season in the spring.
“I know we’ve all been wanting to hit people for like four years now,” said Casey Nevarez.
Assistant coach Cecil Brown has been coaching at McCurdy for 37 years after he played at the school.
“We had pride in football,” he said of when he played. “Somehow we lost that pride. That really hurt me pretty bad, because I love McCurdy football.”
Coach Nevarez said he is letting the team set their own goals for performance, while he focuses on teaching fundamentals.
“For example, I’ve had one or two kids say they want to win districts,” he said. “Okay, what does that look like? (They said), ‘Well, we don’t know yet, coach.’”
But Nevarez said he thinks this is a .500 team this year while setting up success with nearly everyone returning for next season.. He said that Brown told him, “I can honestly say football is back at McCurdy” and that he was the most excited he had been in many years.
“It’s going to be a struggle, it’s going to be a hard battle,” Brown said. “We’re down at the bottom, below dirt. And now we have to scratch our way out of it. I think by the end of the year, we should look a lot better. (In the district) we should be able to play with everybody.”
“More than anything, we’re just happy to be back out here again,” Nevarez said. “They’re just excited to be back at it.”