National association honors St. Michael's football coach
Dec. 7—In his two decades of service as a coach at his alma mater, Joey Fernandez has had his fair share of adversity.
His ability to overcome during the pandemic's early days has earned him a bit of national recognition. The longtime St. Michael's multi-sport coach was recognized Tuesday by the National Federation of State High School Associations, which named him New Mexico's 11-man football coach of the year.
Technically, Fernandez didn't coach a game in 2020. With air-tight COVID-19 protocols in place, New Mexico was one of the few states to shut down all amateur sports during the pandemic's initial encroachment in the state.
The Horsemen played an abbreviated three-game slate in the spring, a truncated run that goes down as part of the 2020-21 athletic calendar despite all games taking place this year.
"It's a nice honor, but you can't get it without great coaches and great kids around you," Fernandez said. "Anytime you get picked for something like this, it shows what kind of people you have on a daily basis. No one can do this alone. I've been lucky to have great assistant coaches. I've learned to let them do a lot of the work, especially in track. It sort of takes the stress off in a lot of ways."
This is the third career statewide honor for Fernandez but the first from the NFHS. The other two were from the New Mexico High School Coaches Association, which honors its top coaches in all sports each year.
It was the NMHSCA's nomination of Fernandez that put him on the NFHS radar. It puts him in line for a potential national coach of the year award, which the NFHS will name at a later date.
To be recognized in what will go down as an historically challenging time for the state, Fernandez said it's particularly sweet.
"There's been a lot of years where we all faced a lot of adversity, but the last year or so it feels like, week in and week out, there was something going on," he said. "It forced me to be creative and do things a little differently. When you have kids who can allow themselves to change, it makes it a lot easier. It kept me on my toes, that's for sure. It made us all work a little harder."
Fernandez coached St. Michael's to this year's Class 3A state championship game, the school's sixth trip to the finals during his tenure. The Horsemen lost that game, but combined with last spring's 3-0 record, he coached the program to 12 wins in the 2021 calendar year.
