Q&A: Clovis schools athletic director talks changes, new season

Editor's note: This is one in a continuing series of interviews with local officials. Lonnie Baca is the athletic director for Clovis Municipal Schools.

Q: Now that school is back in session, what can people look forward to as they watch the Wildcats and Lady Cats this year?

A: We did add powerlifting to our programs. We're going to be offering that for both boys and girls. That'll be a first for us this year. That season actually does not begin until January. We did hire a coach for that program. We are in the process of doing a survey to ask students to find out what the interest is for participation.

This will be the fourth year that we will offer wrestling. So that's going pretty well. Of course, all our other programs are going pretty well, also.

In regard to what to look forward to, we still have a lot of young athletes that are now progressing in the system and moving up into our programs. We're just really excited for our athletic programs to be able to have the opportunity to watch kids play; after the COVID situation, where that was taken away from us and our kids. It sure is nice to kind of be back to normal. I'm really excited about what the Wildcats can do this season.

Q: Any new changes? Coaching staff? Facility updates?

A: We do have a couple of new head coaches and some positions that we have not filled yet. We did have a resignation last year of our girl's head tennis coach. We have filled that position with a lady who's teaching here at Clovis High School. Her name is Andrea Fells.

Our former head volleyball coach retired and moved out of Clovis. So our new head volleyball coach is Christy Hill.

We are currently in the process of looking for a girl's head track coach, and we will be interviewing (this) week for that. We hired a new girl's head swim coach; his name is Elliot Ford.

We did have a tremendous amount of construction this summer, which is still ongoing. We're working on total revamp of the interior part of our high school gymnasium, including redoing the floor, painting all the walls, and then putting in some new bleachers.

In our football stadium, we are continuing the process of installing a brand new track, as well as brand new lighting and a revamp of our public restrooms.

At Gattis Middle School, we are fixing up that football field so that it can be a competitive football field, getting lights put on their scoreboard. Hopefully, within the next year or two, we'll be able to use that facility for games.

Q: New Mexico Activities Association has some new rules regarding fan behavior. Talk about that and whether you have any concerns.

A: We continue to enforce sportsmanship and good character by both athletes, coaches and fans at our games. We haven't had too big of a problem with fans in Clovis. In the last couple of years, you know, you have the typical person that might get a little bit emotional. We try to redirect that behavior by going up and visiting with them. That usually takes care of the situation.

The NMAA rules speak about something egregious, which goes beyond, I don't want to use the word normal, but the normal, bad fan behavior, to go to that next level, whatever that level is. It's something that we're going to need to experiment with and find out how it's actually going to work on the NMAA side of things.

As long as we as a school district and our administrators who are on duty are vigilant regarding watching for bad behavior and redirecting bad behavior and dealing with it as needed, I think we can avoid ever getting to that egregious level. We need to make sure that we're going to step in as soon as possible to not allow things to escalate.

They're (NMAA) calling it the two-strike policy. Hopefully, we don't get any strikes at all.

Q: How do you all plan to handle security at sporting events? What's changed in the past year or so?

A: There is one big change that we have implemented for our varsity football games and our varsity basketball games that we're in an experimental phase with. We chose to pick those two sports because those are the most attended events.

We bought a weapons detection system. This system detects weapons, as well as anything that is like a knife, or even like a fingernail clipper, it'll pick that up.

Our district purchased something like 500 cameras this last summer and have installed those throughout our campuses. We do have security guards on every one of our campuses.

At our varsity football games, because of the size of the crowd, we also employ Clovis police officers who attend our games and help with security. So, we are trying to be pretty vigilant.

Q: Tell me about the booster club and how they support Clovis athletes. Do you have fundraising goals?

A: For Clovis schools, every athletic team has its own booster club. Each of them sets their individual goals in regard to how much money they hope to raise to help support our student athletes.

- Compiled by Landry Sena, the Staff of the News