After Jonathan Trujillo stopped competing in special olympics, the team brought him on as an assistant coach.
Trujillo, 20, had been competing for about a decade in track and field, swimming and bowling. He would run short distances and then up to the 400 meters.
Trujillo, who speaks slowly but clearly, said he likes “seeing the kids participate and encourage each other.”
Española’s special olympics coach Ben Titus said Trujillo was great as a coach, and helped by knowing what to expect at the competitions, since Titus had never been, with things like what to bring and how to schedule the day.
Trujillo and Titus coached the Española team for the Special Olympics through the 2023 spring, up to the May 20 state Summer Games.
Trujillo said he would help in practices by running alongside athletes and ushering them at the Summer Games.
“It made me happy … seeing the kids encourage each other and see the kids get medals for all their hard work,” Trujillo said. “Seeing them in the community and being part of a community and being part of a family.”
Trujillo said that while he likes being a coach, he sometimes misses being an athlete, and being able to run and compete. And he hopes to be part of Special Olympics for a long time.
Competitions in 2020 and 2021 were canceled due to COVID-19. Last year, the regional meet was canceled days before the event due to smoke from fires in northern New Mexico. And a small group from Española were able to attend the state meet, but Titus fell sick and had to miss the competition.
And through the year, Titus watched Trujillo’s leadership skills grow.
“Jon tends to be pretty quiet, so just to get him to say ‘Go!’ or yell loud enough to get people to look at him was a step in the right direction,” Titus said. After Titus said he needed to be louder, “He showed up with a whistle. He never said it, but it was like ‘I don’t need to yell, I’ll just blow this whistle.’ I thought that was great.”
Everyone who competed for Española at the state competition won a medal; Jazmine Munoz, Alandra Lopez, Julius Jaramillo, Alessandro Baldonado, James Sterling and Shia Tapia won first place in their division for their events; Aliyana Carmona and Marciel Suarez finished second in races, and Ethan Chavaria was third in his.
“A sense of earning something,” Titus said. “We’d practiced for a couple days a week for two months, maybe two-and-a-half months. A lot of these athletes don’t always have opportunities for competition or cooperative like our relays, there’s not always opportunities in life to do those things. So, you see smiles, everybody really happy, and the parents, too.”
Sterling particularly impressed Titus with his athletic ability.
“I’m always joking that I don’t know what it feels like to move that fast,” he said.
In April, Pojoaque Valley High School hosted a regional competition for the first time since 2019 for track and field.
“It went very fast,” Titus said. “A few less athletes than usual … we had maybe 50 or 60 athletes at that competition that day. And it was a learning experience for me to try and figure out where to get people and at what times. But everybody was super happy and smiling.”
In May, Titus was surprised by the size of the state meet, that included a hot air balloon.
While top athletes compete for the nationals competition, Titus said it was too difficult to pursue travel for that, but it could potentially be considered in the future.