Commentary: Shortly after I moved to Las Cruces in 2002, then-Sun-News reporter Steve Ramirez told me if I really wanted to understand the community, I needed to go to the Cruces-Mayfield game.
I spent the first 12 years of my career as a sportswriter, and had been to hundreds of high school football games. I knew how important they could be to a community.
But I had never experienced anything like that.
It wasn’t just the game, but the whole week leading up to it. It seemed like everyone in town was wearing either green and gold or red and blue. It made me feel kind of bad for Onate fans.
Each day leading up to the game there were special events to build the anticipation and excitement. By gameday, even I was fired up, and I had absolutely no allegiance to either school.
I spent part of the game on the Mayfield side and part on the Cruces side, and there wasn’t really any difference. Both were incredibly proud of their teams and what they had accomplished.
Those were the glory days for both teams. The Trojans and Bulldawgs would go on to meet each other for the state championship that year. They also played each other for the state championship in 2013, when USA Today ranked the rivalry as the second best in the nation.
A few years ago, I went to a comedy night where one of the performers was from Las Cruces and had moved to LA to start her career. She noted that nobody in Los Angeles cares about anything as much as we care about, as she put it, that stupid football game. Except she didn’t say stupid. It was the late show, so she used a more colorful adjective.
The combined dominance of the two teams over such a sustained period of time was both rare and impressive. In the 20 seasons from 1995 to 2014, the Trojans won seven state championships, including three in a row from 2005 to 2007, and played in 14 state championship games. They were a dynasty.
That ended in 2012 when Centennial, the fourth high school in Las Cruces, opened its doors. The impact wasn’t immediate, as both teams reached the championship game the next year. Mayfield would go on to play for the championship again in 2014, but hasn’t been back since.
Last week, it was announced that the Trojans will be dropping out of the top level. For the next two years, they will play at the 5A level in football only, and will now be in the same district as Deming, Santa Teresa and Chaparral.
They will still play the Cruces-Mayfield game every year, but not likely in the final game of the season, district Athletics Director Earnest Viramontes told the Sun-News. And, I would assume this will end the debate about playing games at Aggie Memorial Stadium.
Head coach Michael Bradley was realistic about the change. He said enrollment projections aren’t great for the next few years, and this will give his team a better chance to compete.
I remember when the school board was first debating the need for a fourth high school. That was before the burst of the housing bubble and subsequent global recession. Expectations for growth were still highly optimistic.
There was a lot of talk back then about what a fourth school would mean for the football teams. Those concerns were rightly placed on the back burner, and academic considerations prevailed. Perhaps that was still the right decision. But it is sad to lose something that was once so special.
Walter Rubel can be reached at waltrubel@gmail.com