SantaFeToday.com Santa Fe’s Hometown News
By Arnie Leshin
It won’t be in the Guinness Book of Records, but it’s still interesting how the Espanola Valley girls are now 5-for-5 in the championship game of the annual Lady Horsemen Holiday tournament played at St. Michael’s Perez-Shelly gymnasium.
More amazing is that the Sundevils have accomplished this with a different head coach each time, starting with Ron Drake, the next year under Oliver Torres, and then under Ray Romero to complete a 3-for-3 sweep. Three years later, it was Cindy Roybal as head coach as Espanola won it again.
And Saturday afternoon, second-year head coach Joe Estrada made it a quintet when his Sundevils got past host St. Michael’s, 44-28, to cool off a Lady Horsemen team that had won four of their last five starts.
Espanola won its fifth straight and improved to 9-4, and the Lady Horsemen find themselves all even at 7-7.
Trailing 23-20 early in the third quarter, the Sundevils began making baskets and the home team began missing them. In fact, St. Michael’s scored only two points in the final quarter, and made but one field goal in the final 14 minutes.
It was an outcome that spoiled the play of Lady Horsemen junior forward Stella Valencia. She crashed the boards for 16 rebounds and tossed in five points. That was the good, the bad was her team’s 22 turnovers and failure to get the ball in the basket in the second half. They made only 5-of-21 shots in that span that began with back-to-back buckets late in the first half.
St. Michael’s senior Carisa Padilla, the two-time state golf champion, had the team-high 14 points and accounted for six of the team’s nine points following the intermission.
In Saturday’s consolation games, third place went to Pecos’ defending state 2A champions with a 41-31 triumph over Albuquerque Sandia Prep. Los Alamos took fifth place via its 34-25 win over Taos, and Santa Fe High finished seventh via a (2-0) forfeit
over Raton, which didn’t want to risk the 3-hour trip following an overnight snow storm.
This put the Demonettes at 5-6 and Raton at 2-6. Pecos is now 9-2, Sandia Prep 1-7, Los Alamos at 4-7 and Taos at 3-4. Raton is hoping for better weather and better driving conditions when it plays a district contest Jan. 14at St. Michael’s.
The Mescalero Apache girls had their 11-game win streak snapped on Saturday after being routed, 65-34, by 3A power Navajo Prep in the final of the Striking Eagle tournament hosted by the Navajo Prep Eagles, which is now 9-1 and No. 1 ranked in 3A.
The Eagles, who have won over 4A schools Shiprock and Bloomfield, had its lone defeat at the hands of 4A Gallup, 67-57. Relieved are the Chiefs who will not see Navajo Prep anymore this season. By coincidence, Prep is located on West Apache Road in Farmington.
Coached by Elmer Chavez, Mescalero Apache was only behind 23-12 at the end of the first quarter, but the gap increased when the taller Eagles began making shots and the Chiefs weren’t. Chavez coached Santa Fe High’s girls to the state 4A championship in 2014.
