HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL RECAP

If the shortened high school football season went by so fast that you missed the final games played by St. Michael’s and Capital, the Horsemen were undefeated in three starts and the Jaguars split their four games.

St. Michael’s was awesome and overpowered Taos on the road, 48-3, Espanola Valley at home, 60-6, and then hit the road for Raton in a game that was originally scheduled for March 3 but postponed because of coronavirus pandemic issues, and so the tilt was played as the season finale and the Horsemen carted home a 47-21 rout. Not bad, 155 points scored and 30 yielded.

The offense machine was engineered by 6-foot-2 junior quarterback Lucas Coriz and 6-2 junior running back Devin Flores. And then the two packed their football gear and switched to basketball, where in their first game, Flores scored 26 points, Coriz 14 and junior running back Derek Martinez 13, for 59 points of the team’s 67 total in the district win up at Raton.

At the Tigers, Coriz completed 21 passes for 324 yards and four touchdowns, and Flores, one of the more versatile two-way players, added seven catches for 104 yards and three touchdowns as well as a 60-yard pick-six and five tackles.

Capital played all four games at home. It routed Los Alamos, 55-7, and Pojoaque Valley, 59-6, behind senior running back Luke Padilla, then lost 44-7 to Los Lunas and 30-28 to Piedra Vista in the closer.

The PV game was a back-and-forth tussle, with the visitors leading 13-7 after one quarter, the Jaguars shutting them out in the second quarter and taking a 20-13 halftime lead. But when Capital did not score in the third quarter, Piedra Vista tallied two touchdowns and led 27-20 heading into the fourth quarter, where the Jags scored and then included the two-point conversion, but the visitors won on a field goal to finish at 3-2 while Capital was all even at 2-2.