Less than two months before the start of the football season, Pojoaque is still looking for its starting quarterback.
Senior Ethan Meloy and junior Mario Baros are going back and forth throughout the summer, looking to take over as the team’s signal caller. But, rather than a competition, the two are helping each other grow and learn through the summer.
“We’re together,” Baros said. “There’s no competition. Whoever goes in, goes in. Focus on getting better.”
“We take his best attributes, we use my best attributes,” Meloy said. “Then we work on at practice what we both need to do.”
Both of Pojoaque’s quarterbacks took the field in Taos for 7-on-7 camp on June 29.
“Both of them are pretty even,” Pojoaque coach Zeke Villegas said. “It’s going to probably take through the summer to figure out who’s going to be our starting quarterback.”
While Villegas sees it as an open competition between the two, both Meloy and Baros expect to rotate at quarterback through the season. Both of them saw limited action last year when starter Adam Pacheco battled an injury.
Both are mobile quarterbacks, but Meloy, as a former wide receiver and a track sprinter, brings an extra level of dual-threat while Baros focuses more on a pocket presence and reading the field. And Meloy is adjusting to being a full-time quarterback.
“I like being tossed around,” he said. “I like running routes. I like getting in on it all. If I’m able to do it, I want to do it. I just love playing.”
The day’s games were played on 30-yard fields, with four downs and first-down markers, and were two-hand touch games.
Their last game of the day, facing Bernalillo, was their most competitive, with contested calls (given the lack of official referees), and Pojoaque was about one yard away from getting the win. Jonah Villegas, the freshman son of coach Zeke, grabbed an interception and would have put Pojoaque in the lead with a score, but he was touched down just short of the goal line.
Jonah Villegas had scored a touchdown on an impressive screen pass run earlier in that game.
Zeke said that Jonah brings a winning experience from his time at the St. Michael’s middle school to the team.
The Elks are looking to bounce back after an 0-9 season where they lost every game by 42 points or more, and scored just 20 the whole season. Their only close game came against Santa Fe Indian School, where they trailed 8-7 in the second quarter before rain storms ultimately canceled the game. It was a downturn from a 5-4 season the year before, the school’s best since 2013.
“The passing camps, it’s built a lot of confidence in these kids,” Villegas said. “Coming from 0-9, it’s just building confidence every day. They’re competing everywhere they go.”
Pojoaque also faced Robertson, among other opponents, where Ethan Meloy threw two touchdowns to Killian Medina.
Zeke Villegas said that through four passing camps this summer (at Bernalillo, Santa Fe and Socorro), the team is improving every week.
“We have a lot of athletes in Pojoaque,” he said. “ A lot of size, a lot of speed.”