When McCurdy took the field in advance of their state tournament game, many players were suddenly sporting blonde spots in their hair. In some cases, their entire head had gone blonde.
One player’s idea had turned into a full team bonding exercise. Leading up to the tournament, they went to the salon together for matching hair dye.
And when coach Ian Maestas concluded a team huddle after a victory, he had one last thing to tell the team. He had to fulfill the promise he made before the game.
“Guess I’m going blonde, too!” he shouted.
The No. 5 seed blonde Bobcats (18-8-1) defeated No. 12 Mescalero Apache (6-18) 9-5 on Wednesday at home in the first round of the state tournament. They will face No. 4 Menaul/Oak Grove (19-5) on May 16 in Albuquerque in the quarterfinals.
Originally, senior center fielder Lucas Martinez had the idea, and planned to dye his hair with catcher Cruz Martinez.
“One turned into two, two turned into four,” said senior shortstop Thomas Bolton. “Next thing you know, whole team. It helps us feel like a team.”
Pitcher Carlos Garcia said the team’s lightheartedness helps them stay loose on the field.
“We’re not thinking about messing up,” he said. “We’re thinking about what we’re going to tell the person next to us when we get the out.”
The Chiefs were in the state tournament for the first time in school history, with a program that had started up recently. A fundamentally sound team, they were hungry for a win.
“I knew they were going to come in here and fight,” Maestas said. “They didn’t drive all that way to roll over.”
But Garcia shut down the order early, retiring eight of his first 10 batters, stranding a triple in the second inning with two strikeouts. McCurdy got on the board in the first with a triple by Tino Salazar-Archuleta, who stole home after a dropped third strike.
Garcia ran into trouble in the third inning with two outs, starting with a hit by pitch, ultimately allowing three runs to score as the Chiefs took the lead.
The Bobcats, however, answered back. Jacob Samaniego led off the third reaching on a dropped third strike, and stole second. Two singles, a Garcia double, and a sac fly later, McCurdy took back the lead.
“I saw determination, hunger, and a don’t-quit attitude,” Maestas said.
And in the fifth inning, their bats exploded. The second and third times through the order proved fruitful in finding the timing against Mescalero’s lefty pitcher. And the nerves had settled down. Bolton hit a second RBI single, Salazar-Archuleta smacked his second triple of the game, and hits kept coming as McCurdy poured on five more runs.
“He also had a weird release,” Bolton said of getting used to the pitcher.
“We had to slow down a lot,” Garcia added.
From there, it was a cruise for Garcia and then Jeremaya Roybal, who came on in relief for the final two innings to close the game.
The Bobcats will next play the No. 4 seed, Menaul/Oak Grove, at the Jennifer Riordan Complex. The co-cop Owls feature strong pitching, and won a competitive district.
“Practice will be fun this week,” Maestas said.
To beat them, McCurdy will have to continue their strong team spirit, which Maestas said gives the team an edge. Including matching hair, and push-ups in the field.
Surprisingly, the push-ups were not anything instructed by the coach. It was Lucas Martinez again that started one day at practice, doing push-ups after a strikeout. Then the rest of the outfield joined him. By Wednesday, the whole team was doing push-ups after any field out.
“They started playing really good in the outfield during that practice,” Bolton said. “A game or two later, we started doing it in the infield, too.”