Clovis runners hope to snag trophy

CLOVIS — It’s a big week for Clovis High, a week that quite a few athletes in purple have been looking forward to, have aspired to, since August.

Today at 3:30 p.m., Clovis’ fifth-seeded boys soccer team (17-2-1) will be playing a state 5A quarterfinal against fourth-seeded Albuquerque (15-2-1) at the Bernalillo High School soccer complex.

On Saturday, Clovis’ cross country team will be at Rio Rancho for the state championship meet, beginning at 9 a.m.

Not exactly a ho-hum week for Wildcat athletics.

Down to eight

The Clovis boys soccer team climbed up the next rung on the state-tournament ladder with Saturday’s 3-0 first-round victory over 12th-seeded Santa Fe at Leon Williams Stadium.

“I’m happy. I think Albuquerque will be a good opponent for us,” said Clovis senior striker and co-captain Kade Jones, who tallied a goal and an assist on Saturday. “I think it’ll test us.”

“The guys have worked hard since our season ended last year,” Wildcats head coach Greg Trujillo said. “It’s been a process.”

They’ve ridden the Trust-the-Process train all the way to the state 5A final eight. Now comes a tough, senior-laden Albuquerque High team.

One major difference from Saturday to today — aside from not being in the friendly confines of Leon Williams Stadium and having to travel a good distance — will be the playing surface. Clovis bested Santa Fe on the Williams Stadium artificial turf Saturday. Today’s game will be on grass.

“The field’s going to be slower,” Trujillo said. “We’ll see what happens.”

But the Wildcats, despite playing their games on turf, do practice on grass. So they should be prepared for the feel of today’s game, the flow of it.

They are playing at Bernalillo High’s field 9, but will they be on cloud 9 when the game’s over? Will the process continue?

Run like the wind

Clovis’ cross country teams will head into Rio Rancho this weekend with plenty of momentum.

There’s the boys team, newly-minted as District 4/5A champion after dominating last Friday’s meet at Ned Houk Park and finishing 29 points ahead of second-place Hobbs, while taking the top three individual spots and getting an individual title from Jon Fuentes.

And there’s the girls team, which took second place, just three points behind champion Hobbs, thanks in part to Annalysse Hamlett’s second-place individual finish and Shylee Tree joining her in the top five.

But this is a more diverse field, a bigger and tougher one, for Clovis. Each Wildcat team has more to contend with than just Hobbs, Carlsbad and Roswell.

“That’s going to be really different,” Hamlett said, “because there are some really fast girls out there.”

The Clovis boys might just have a shot to take it all, though. They’re plenty deep, with Jerrick Maldonado coming in second and T.J. Gregg third, behind Fuentes last Friday. Jose Salas was fifth, Kannon Brooks eighth and Colton Wolf 10th.

Top three, four out of the top five, six out of the top 10. That’s the kind of depth that should be able to compete with the state’s best. Clovis head coach Mark Bussen, however, approaches it with guarded optimism.

“I don’t speculate, I don’t put pressure on anybody,” Bussen said. “But I’d really like to get a trophy, and I think that we’re capable if things fall. Really, you have to have a little luck there, everybody’s gotta be ready to go and run a good race. But I think after (the district meet), we’re a lot closer to that (state goal) ... with Jose stepping back up and being healthy, Colton stepping in and running well.”

“It’s definitely not going to be easy. We’re going to have to run the best we’ve ever run,” Gregg said. “But there’s a definite possibility that we can win states.”

Fuentes’ optimism wasn’t quite so guarded. “We’re excited,” he said. “We want to win it.”

The Lady Wildcats, meanwhile, showed a lot in last Friday’s district race. So perhaps they can do more than just compete hard.

“We’ll probably get a little more excited and set some more specific goals when we look at the other districts to kinda see how they run,” Bussen said. “But the girls performance (at districts) was pretty good, so I’m probably going to adjust my expectation a little bit.”