Senior basketball players across the state of New Mexico lucky enough to be selected to the North-South All-Star teams this coming summer will now have two additional opportunities to hit the hardwood, as opposed to one.
The New Mexico High School Coaches Association Board of Directors voted in favor of implementing a brand-new format for this year’s All-Star Extravaganza.
Instead of 12 teams divided by A/2A, 3A/4A and 5A/6A, now their will be a total of 16 teams in all, which includes eight apiece for boys and girls. The teams will first by divided by large-school and small-school and secondly by area. The teams will be based off of geographical location as follows: Northeast, Northwest, Southeast and Southwest.
“Using some dividing lines to separate the four regions really gave us the chance to pick a lot of quality kids and make those games really interesting,” NMHSCA President Jared Howell said. “It also will help get more people to the games and it just makes it a more prestigious thing.”
The location of this year’s games will be held at Valley and Manzano High Schools from May 31 to June 1. The first games will matchup the Northeast with the Southeast and the Northwest with the Southwest. Both the winners and losers from each game will matchup with each other the following day for the second game.
“The nice thing about basketball is that you can get that extra game,” Howell said. “Listening to different coaches across the state, we felt we needed a change. They expressed concerns about the North-South format and we realized we just weren’t quite where we needed to be and this was one of the ideas we came up with.”
Locally, there were a total of 10 athletes selected, eight of those being on the girls side.
Española Valley High School’s Kaylinn Martinez and Kaylee Chavez will team up with Pojoaque Valley High School’s Taylor Roybal on the Northeast large-school squad and Peñasco High School’s Bianca Contreras and Alaska Lopez will suit up for the Northeast small-school team and will battle against the Northwest, which includes a triplet of Dulce High School players in Brooke Vigil, Lauryn Vigil and Jaelynn Reval.
For the boys, 4A first-team all-state selection Ryan Trujillo from Española will represent the Northeast for the large schools and McCurdy Charter School’s Ubaldo Barela will lace up for the Northeast small-school.
The NMHSCA has not just totally revamped the basketball portion of the all-star events, but every sport has been adjusted to the four geographical location format.
“What prompted the change was there were just a lot of games,” Howell said about football. “We were one of the only states to have like three or four different football games. We wanted to get back to making it more of a true all-star type thing instead of like a senior bowl. It should be hard to get into and it should be the best of the best.”
Howell said NMHSCA Executive Director Buster Marbrey searched nationwide to dial up the format change.
“A lot of ideas Buster borrowed came from Indiana and their format,” Howell said. “We liked where they were and we kind of borrowed some ideas from them and then tailored them to what we felt like we needed in New Mexico.”
All-Star schedule
• Baseball: Small-School June 3-4 at Rio Rancho High School; Large-School June 6-7 at Field of Dreams
• Basketball: May 31-June 1 at Manzano and Valley High Schools
• Football: June 7-8 at Nusenda Community Stadium
• Softball: June 3-4 at Cleveland High School
• Spirit: TBA, still in evaluation
• Tennis: June 5-6 at TBA (only two teams, North and South)
• Volleyball: June 7-8 at TBA