Santa Fe all in to resume sports, but Abq., others may opt out

Feb. 15—Buckle your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy ride.

Monday marks the self-imposed deadline of the New Mexico Activities Association for schools to declare if they are in or out with the for football, volleyball, cross-country and soccer, sports typically played in the fall.

The proposed first day of practice is just a week away on Feb. 22 and the NMAA wants to get a thumbs up/down from districts willing and able to participate.

As of now, Santa Fe Public Schools is in. That's the good news.

The bad? A number of large school districts appear to be out, including Albuquerque Public Schools. That's a real problem in the state's largest classifications. APS makes up about half of most alignments and having it and Los Lunas out of the picture leaves Capital and Santa Fe High all alone in Class 5A districts for volleyball, soccer and cross-country.

It's even trickier for football, where Santa Fe High is in 6A and Capital in 5A. The Demons would be left alone in a quiet neighborhood that could potentially lose Sandia, La Cueva, Eldorado, Manzano, Albuquerque High and even Clovis. Capital's situation is murky with the undetermined status of Farmington, Piedra Vista, Miyamura and Los Alamos.

Across town, St Michael's is in a similar boat. District rivals Santa Fe Indian, Robertson and West Las Vegas have already announced they're opting out, leaving just Raton. Horsemen head coach Joey Fernandez said it leaves the possibility of a three-way city round-robin against Santa Fe High and Capital, but the NMAA said each team would need to compete in some sort of district race if the master plan includes a state playoff system.

Any way you slice it, Monday will be an interesting day for the immediate future of prep sports.

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The people have spoken — at least those with a vested interest.

Fans of the New Mexico United soccer team flooded state lawmakers last week with, according to a team release, 10,723 letters of support regarding a proposal that would use public funds to finance a multipurpose venue. In other words, the team wants a stadium of its own and it got its fans to lobby hard on its behalf.

The team is marketing the facility as a year-round attraction that would include retail shopping, art, restaurants and, of course, fútbol.

The United led the United Soccer League in attendance during its first season in 2019, sharing Isotopes Park with the Colorado Rockies' Triple-A affiliate. They spent the 2020 season on the road thanks to the pandemic, navigating a nomadic schedule that ended in a run to the USL playoffs.

Exactly how much the stadium would cost and where it would go remains a mystery. There is land available near the Isotopes Park/University Stadium/The Pit area, one of the few places in Albuquerque with the road infrastructure to handle big crowds, and still be close enough to hotels and the airport to make it convenient for visiting teams.

For reference, Isotopes Park cost $28 million two decades ago. Renovations to The Pit were $60 million, but that was a dozen years ago.

Buying the land, designing the space and building a multipurpose venue that would need to accommodate 10,000 to 15,000 fans wouldn't come cheap.

The United fans, however, are on board. In a recent poll conducted by Research and Polling, Inc., 63 percent of those asked said they would be in favor of a new stadium, while 23 percent said no. The other 14 percent apparently didn't care.

With the Legislature in full swing, expect some sort of news about this plan to trickle out before everyone heads home.

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It was hard to think about baseball when waking up to temperatures in the single digits on Valentine's Day, but the return of America's Pastime happens this week. Major league teams begin reporting to spring training, college teams are opening their seasons and high school teams get the welcome relief of 10-to-1 practice pods in some counties with decent numbers battling COVID-19.

The University of New Mexico opens its season Friday at the Sanderson Ford College Baseball Classic in Surprise, Ariz. The Lobos face Gonzaga on Friday and Oregon State for single games the final three days of the tournament.

New Mexico State opens on the road at UNLV, playing a four-game series starting Friday. New Mexico Highlands is tentatively slated to begin its season Feb. 25 in Grand Junction, Colo., against Montana State-Billings.

Of course, it wouldn't be a regular week around here without news from the Pecos League. Former Santa Fe Fuego skipper Bill Moore announced his retirement earlier this week. He was the team's first manager in 2012, leading the Fuego to the league title two years later and helped them return to the finals the following year.

He went on to manage Pecos League rivals Garden City, Bakersfield, Tucson and Wasco. In eight years he won 274 games and made the playoffs five times.

The league also announced its affiliate team in the American Association, the Houston Apollos, has added popular former Fuego manager T.J. Zarewicz to its coaching staff.