With Dulce High School opting out of sports in 2020-21, it was a tough year for all students and athletes. Before this year, Dulce had only played one season in the last four years.
But after a year away from football, the Dulce Hawks are back and ready to play, and nothing will stop them. In their first home game, even in a 56-0 loss to Fort Sumner/House, they kept the crowd engaged the entire game.
“They didn’t give up,” said coach Brad Muniz. “You know, there was frustration and all. But they didn’t give up. And there’s a lot of fight in this team right here.”
Sure, the offense struggled heavily in the game, going backward more often than not. Plus, they allowed scores on the first three plays from scrimmage, along with two others on defense and special teams. Perhaps this all is just to be expected when playing the No. 1 ranked team in the state.
But even trailing by more than 50 points, the Hawks never gave up, fighting until the final whistle, determined to get better.
“These boys, they’re starting to come together a lot more,” Muniz said. “They’re finding each other. It’s going to take a while, but we’re going to try to make some noise in our next game. We’ll see what happens.”
Dulce is still partially adjusting to playing in 8-man football, a change that began with the fall 2019 season after the school had to cancel the 2018 season when they failed to find enough players. But with a consistently larger roster now, Muniz is hoping to move back at the next opportunity.
Most of the other 8-man teams play in remote corners of the state. Next week, against Tatum, the game will be played in Estancia as a neutral-site game halfway between, so neither school has to take an eight-hour bus ride. Playing in the 11-man division would open scheduling to closer schools. As a result, Dulce only plays two home games this year.
Throughout the game, Dulce rotated between players at nearly every position. Muniz said the team needs to continue to work on cardio and building endurance up for an entire game.
After the game, it was senior Santiago Largo who led the post-game huddle, and told the team how they have the talent to win and need to work in practice to get better.
Nothing seemed to start well for the Hawks.
From the very beginning, the Foxes took the opening kickoff into the endzone, going up 8-0 18 seconds into the game. Dulce punted after a sack, and then the Foxes scored again on a 40-yard screen pass.
“We’re still learning from a lot of mistakes,” Muniz said. “We’re still a young team.”
The Hawks’ second drive also went backward, but on one of the most impressive plays of the day, Largo launched a sky-high punt that traveled 46 yards and was unreturnable.
But Fort Sumner kept piling on the points, first on an 89-yard touchdown run, and then on a sack fumble returned for a touchdown, and it was 32-0 less than seven minutes into the game.
The Hawks started to turn to the passing game, and the decision nearly paid off for the team. Both junior Bob Harrison Jr. and senior Kai Cassador threw strong passes, including one to Largo where he nearly had every defender beat but dropped what could have been a touchdown.
Muniz said the passing game was just as close against Melrose in their last game, though Dulce was again scoreless, with Harrison making strong downfield passes.
“That passing game, it’s going to come through,” Muniz said. “We’re right on the edge with it. It’s going to be something once we start connecting with it.”
A tipped pass was intercepted and would have been a score the other way if not for a block in the back, but the Foxes scored on the next play, activating the running clock up 40-0 with less than eight minutes of game time gone in the first quarter.
In the second quarter, the defense made tackles short of the end zone, but Fort Sumner scored twice more after a Dulce fumble, and led 56-0 in the closing minutes, looking to close out the game with a 50-point halftime mercy rule.
The Hawks could extend the game into the second half with a touchdown, and a pass interference penalty brought them near midfield with one untimed down before halftime. But a final pass fell incomplete, signaling the end of the game.
“We’re going through some monsters,” Muniz said of the schedule. “These ‘monsters’ we’re playing right now, they’re going to make us stronger. This team’s going to improve.”
Indeed, the Hawks’ first four opponents rank one through four in the most recent coaches poll, and talent-wise seem to be in a separate class from the rest of the 8-man division if the constant 50-plus-point wins are any indication.
Dulce now sits 0-3 this season. Their next game is against Tatum, who at 2-1 only narrowly lost to Fort Sumner. After that game, though, Muniz looks forward to opponents at a similar level for more competitive games. Navajo Pine, the Oct. 1 opponent, has for instance also lost all three games by 50-point losses.
If Dulce can rebound from early losses and compete against the second tier of opponents in their back half of the schedule, they have a chance
But despite three demoralizing losses in a row, the Hawks are not giving up on the season. Even after they were outscored 128-0 in their first two games, more than 20 players came ready to play another game that would likely be similar.
How many of us could say that, if our team that lost three games by an average of 58-0, we would rush out to play the next game?
But there is every indication that these Hawks will continue to work just as hard.
“One thing we live on is, the easiest thing you can do is quit,” Muniz said. “And there’s no quit in this team. This team, they’re full of fighters.”