Española Valley still boasts the largest high school gymnasium by capacity in the state.
Though it would make administration nervous, Edward Medina Gymnasium could host over 4,000 rowdy fans on a given evening. Most recently, for high-stakes boys basketball games in 2022 against Taos and Del Norte, Española Athletic Director Matthew Abeyta estimated over 3,000 fans in attendance.
“Our fans are passionate about Sundevil athletics,” Abeyta said. “They come out to support the teams.”
And the Sundevils will look to fill up the gymnasium again for a new tournament this December. Española will host the Sundevil Shootout boys and girls basketball tournament on Dec. 7 to Dec. 9, inviting local teams to face the Sundevils.
The 2023 tournament will be a four-team shootout with “round robin” play, including teams from the northwest and southeast corner of the state. Española Valley hosts Miyamura, Roswell High and Mesa Vista.
Abeyta wanted to resurrect the tournament that he remembered from his time as a student. The first year of the “Sundevil Classic” was in 1979, according to a Rio Grande SUN article at the time. And the tournament had been played as recently as 2013, when the Sundevil boys team defeated Valencia and two teams from Colorado. The following year, the Española boys team played at the Sandia Prep tournament.
The new tournament will host both boys and girls.
Abeyta said that the tournaments make for tough road games early in the schedule, and the coaches wanted to have home games that could also be in a tournament environment. He said that boys basketball coach Joey Trujillo was especially excited about the tournament.
“He was talking to me every other day,” Abyeta said. “So, we started that conversation.”
Conversations about resurrecting the tournament started in previous years. Abeyta sent out an email blast to the state’s athletic directors looking for teams, and found schools who responded to that.
Changes to the New Mexico Activities Association calendar left an opening in the school’s basketball schedules, filled by the early-December tournament.
The Española boys will also play in tournaments at Rio Rancho and St. Michael’s, while the girls’ tournaments are St. Michael’s and at Santa Fe High.
Abeyta said the head boys basketball coach from Taos told him that there are only two places where he has to prepare for both the opposing team and the crowd: Española Valley and Gallup.
After a November 2021 fire, the school had to rebuild the gymnasium’s floor, sound system and scoreboard. The gymnasium was ready just in time for the 2022-23 year. Abeyta said some of the upgrades were made with this kind of tournament in mind.
Abeyta and the entire Española athletic department staff will be quite busy this winter. A month after hosting the Sundevil Shootout, eight schools from northern New Mexico come to Española for the boys and girls Northern Rio Grande tournaments.