Capital baseball team continues hot streak
Jun. 7—The 2021 Capital baseball team continued its remarkable turnaround with another pair of accomplishments. With a District 5-5A doubleheader sweep of Santa Fe High on Saturday, the Jaguars hit the 10-win mark for the first time in 15 years. They also secured their first winning record since the 2005 team went 12-11 and reached the Class 4A quarterfinals.
Capital can add more to its list Wednesday by upsetting the undefeated and top-ranked Rio Rancho Rams. The teams played each other on May 12 in Rio Rancho, with the Rams winning by a 17-1 score.
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A familiar face for Capital walked the St. Michael's Athletic Complex during the Horsemen Invitational track and field meet Friday. It was 2016 graduate Augie Larranaga, who is in his first year as assistant coach for the program.
Larranaga left a distinctive trail at his alma mater as a letter-winner in three sports. He was a two-time state champion in the 400 meters and quarterbacked the football team to its first playoff appearance in seven years in 2015.
Larranaga also was a varsity member of the basketball team and was the on the wrong end of one of the more infamous calls in state basketball tournament history. In the 2016 Class 4A championship game against heated district rival Española Valley, Larranaga was called for a (disputed, if you ask many Jaguars fans) charge in the final seconds that gave the Sundevils a 36-34 win.
Larranaga spent his next four years at Adams State College, where he was an accomplished 400 runner for the program, and earned a couple of All-Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference honors.
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Rugby is alive and well in Santa Fe.
The city is home to the Santos Rugby Football Club, which opened its home schedule Saturday at the Municipal Recreation Complex and will celebrate its 50th season next summer.
The team lost to the visiting New Mexico Brujos RFC, 34-31, falling to 2-1 after road wins against New Mexico Tech and the El Paso Scorpions. Up next is a home match against the Albuquerque Aardvarks at the MRC on June 19.
Daniel Rayes touched the ball down to score SRFC's first points of the home slate. Santa Fe took its first and only lead at 31-24 on a try by David Jondreau with 13 minutes remaining. The Brujos scored a walk-off on a 5-pointer by Patrick Sarson to get the win.
Brandon Rey, Jonathan Lithgow, Rayes and Jondreau did all the scoring for the Santos with Tanner Graham connecting on three 2-point conversion kicks.
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May the Coors Light continue to flow at Aggie Memorial Stadium.
This week, New Mexico State University's athletics department and its multimedia rights partner, New Mexico State Sports Properties, announced the have extended their sponsorship with Admiral Beverage Corporation, which provides Coors Light as the designated official beer of Aggie athletics.
The agreement runs through the 2023-24 athletic calendar. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but it came just days after NMSU finalized a home-and-home football contract with Air Force.
The Aggies and Falcons meet Sept. 9, 2023, at Aggie Memorial Stadium, with NMSU returning the trip to Air Force on Sept. 13, 2025.
It's just the latest in a growing list of games against Mountain West Conference opponents. The Aggies will play seven of their 12 games next season against MWC teams with four in each of the following three seasons.
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To steal a line from the late Dennis Green, they are what we thought they were and we let them off the hook.
The "they" in this scenario is the Santa Fe Fuego pitching staff, which opened the season by losing three of four games to Roswell because of — all together now — their Swiss cheese pitching staff. Aside from Sunday night's series opener at Tucson, the first four games of the 2021 Pecos League season were more of the same ol' same ol' for the city's professional baseball team.
Roswell scored 65 runs in those games, pushing at least one run across in 20 of the 36 innings they'd played. The Fuego posted a collective team earned run average of 12.36, giving up 52 hits with a stunning 44 walks and 17 hit batsmen in just 352/3 innings pitched. Toss in the team's errors and it means 55 percent of the 224 Invaders plate appearances ended with the batter reaching base safely.
There have been exceptions to the norm.
Closer August Voight had a 0.00 ERA in his first two appearances and starter Aaron McInyre's first outing saw him exit after allowing two earned runs in five innings.
Still, buckle up for another hitter-happy season of four-hour games, double-digit run totals and boat loads of ridiculous offensive stats.
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Artesia has long held the title of prep football royalty in New Mexico. You can probably add bowling to that list before too long. The school won its fifth straight state championship over the weekend, holding off Pojoaque Valley in the Class 4A State Tournament in Rio Rancho. Española Valley was fourth for the second straight year.
Rio Rancho won the big-school division in 5A. It's the 13th time in the 16-year history of the tournament that either Rio Rancho or crosstown rival Cleveland has won the state title. Only six teams competed in this year's tournament, down from 13 in the pre-COVID season of 2019-20.
The all-time high is 14 schools; neither Santa Fe High nor Capital has taken part in at least five years.
