Emotions ran high for Escalante football players after the game. The seniors had just played the last football game of their careers.
“For a lot of these boys, a lot of them don’t play basketball, they don’t do track,” said Escalante Coach Rico DeYapp. “A lot of them, this is what they look forward to every day. So,the fact that it’s over, the fact that we’re not going to practice Monday, I think that’s what hurts the most for all of us.”
The No. 8 seed Lobos (4-7) lost 49-0 in the state playoff first round to top-seeded Eunice (9-2) on Saturday. For the second-straight season, the Lobos reached the postseason as the final seed, where they were outmatched on the road.
“Not sad about the loss, more about it ending,” said senior lineman Ramon Martinez. “I know these boys are going to be disappointed, but I think we did alright.”
Senior quarterback Trey Archuleta led the Lobos with 81 rushing yards on 24 attempts. Jeremiah Martinez ran 15 times for 54 yards. The Lobos completed just one pass on six attempts, which went for negative yardage, and threw two interceptions.
“For it to come to an end like this kind of hurt, because I really expected more from us,” said Jeremiah Martinez, Ramon’s younger brother (the two are often confused for twins, though Ramon stands a bit taller).
Eunice scored within four plays of the game. Escalante went 3-and-out, punted, and the Cardinals scored again on the next play.
After going down 21-0, Escalante finally seemed to be able to move the ball forward. But their drives were consistently set back by penalties. And while they started to make Eunice work harder on offense, the Cardinals scored on every drive outside of a second-quarter fumble.
“It seemed like we started to get it together,” Jeremiah Martinez said. “Third quarter we let it slip away from us.”
The Cardinals boast an impressive football stadium with beautiful stands, and fireworks shot off after every score. The entire town supports the football team, and goes crazy on game day.
“It was exciting,” DeYapp said. “They were kind of blown away when they saw everything.”
Eunice scored shortly before the half on a long touchdown pass where there appeared to be a missed holding call. That score made it 35-0, and the second half was played with a running clock.
“We had two or three defensive gameplans, because we thought we were going to really struggle with them,” DeYapp said. “And our defense actually played a lot better than I thought it would. Offensively, I thought we’d move the ball a little bit better than we did. But we finally started getting things going.”
After their seventh touchdown, Eunice opted to continue the game by kicking the extra point to go up 49-0. Escalante ran the final seven minutes off the clock, reaching the 22-yard line, before throwing an interception that became the last play of the game.
Though they won just four games against a challenging schedule this season, Escalante did enough to reach their goal of making the playoffs, and beat a rising McCurdy team to get there. With potentially significant realignment coming, Escalante is slowly working to get back to a program on top of the state.
“It felt like it went by fast,” Ramon Martinez said.
But on Saturday, they saw what an elite program in New Mexico 2A looks like. And just how much more there is to do.
“Brick by brick, building blocks trying to get over this little hump,” DeYapp said. “And I think we will, we’ll get to that point with this group of underclassmen we have coming up. It’s going to be a climb still. But we’ll get there.”