Justin Garviso spots Phelix Fox on Friday as he bench presses after the team’s morning practice at Santa Fe Indian School. Three new weightlifting racks were brought in this offseason. The Braves coaching staff hopes more lifting by the players will result in better performances on the field.
Members of Santa Fe Indian School’s offensive and defensive lines perform tackle drills together Friday during preseason practice. The Braves open their season Thursday against Cuba.
Daniel Day practices a running drill that began with sprints and quick cuts to the left before leaping over a bag Friday during Santa Fe Indian School’s preseason practice.
Assistant Coach Paul Trujillo weighs down the sled that gets carried by the Indian Braves players’ tackle drill during practice on August 12, 2022.
The Santa Fe Indian School football team does full team endurance drills before beginning their game drills during their morning practice on August 12, 2022.
Justin Garviso spots Phelix Fox on Friday as he bench presses after the team’s morning practice at Santa Fe Indian School. Three new weightlifting racks were brought in this offseason. The Braves coaching staff hopes more lifting by the players will result in better performances on the field.
Members of Santa Fe Indian School’s offensive and defensive lines perform tackle drills together Friday during preseason practice. The Braves open their season Thursday against Cuba.
Daniel Day practices a running drill that began with sprints and quick cuts to the left before leaping over a bag Friday during Santa Fe Indian School’s preseason practice.
Assistant Coach Paul Trujillo weighs down the sled that gets carried by the Indian Braves players’ tackle drill during practice on August 12, 2022.
The Santa Fe Indian School football team does full team endurance drills before beginning their game drills during their morning practice on August 12, 2022.
A short hallway that once served as the epicenter of postgame activity inside Santa Fe Indian School’s claustrophobic Abeyta Gym is now, in a way, a time capsule of gym equipment well past its prime.
Lining the east wall is a row of outdated elliptical machines, their dusty carcasses unceremoniously dragged out of storage and roped off with yellow caution tape. They are the former residents of what is now the secret laboratory for coach Bill Moon’s football program.
Shoehorned into a storage room no bigger than 60 feet by 15 feet is a makeshift weight room that has thundered to life the last couple of months. A trio of hand-assembled racks dominate one end while machines for shoulder pulleys, bench presses and leg lifts are squeezed between areas of free weights.
You get a true feel for just how cramped it is when you squeeze in 30 or so football players, turn on the harsh fluorescent lights and crank up the music. The sound of clanking weights blends seamlessly with the scents of rubber mats and body odor.
“It’s not big enough for Cleveland [High School], but it’s certainly big enough for us,” Moon said, standing with arms crossed in the doorway as he monitored his team’s activity during a break in two-a-days last week. “These kids are learning what it means to be a football team.”
For the first time in what may be ever, the SFIS football program instituted an offseason weight-training regimen designed to avoid what happened at the end of the 2021 season. Decimated by injuries and left with a roster of fewer than 15 healthy players, the shorthanded Braves had to forfeit their final game to West Las Vegas. After a 5-1 start followed by three blowout losses to open district play, it was a sad end to what started off with a bang.
The culprit, Moon said, was the team’s durability — or lack thereof. The players simply weren’t built to survive the gantlet of 2-3A rivals like Robertson, St. Michael’s, Raton and West.
“We’re the only sport where we have to train year-round,” Moon said. “In a school like this, you have to come out of the blocks without warmups because of the way the kids’ lives are structured. We don’t get 7-on-7 camps, we don’t have those advantages. We have to figure out a way to race Usain Bolt without the benefit of warming up, and it’s like that every year. But at least we have the weight room now.”
Moon and his coaching staff assembled some of the equipment themselves this summer, doing the literal heavy lifting long before any of the players worked their way to campus to see their new digs.
“You do notice a difference because, you know, knowing football is from the neck up but playing it is from the neck down,” said SFIS quarterback Andre Coriz. “It makes our bodies stronger, for sure.”
Running back Taylor Torivio said there’s a difference between pumping iron and learning how to do it the right way. The coaching staff did just that, teaching routines and techniques to streamline the process of building muscle.
“Form is pretty much what you have to get down if you want to do it right,” Torivio said. “It does make a difference. I see it in myself. A lot of us do.”
Only a handful of players showed up to lift every day during the summer, but two of them have seen leaps in terms of overall strength. Center Nathaniel Rosetta said he has added 50 pounds to his personal best in the bench. He’s also increased his squat by more than 100 pounds.
He and running back Leonard Baldonado would meet four days a week and take the Railrunner from their homes in Rio Rancho and Santo Domingo Pueblo, respectively, to get work in.
“I remember we had so many injuries last year that the practice before our last game not one guy showed up,” Baldonado said. “Me and Nate at the very beginning this summer, I could barely lift even bench [115] and now I’m doing [175]. I’m hitting PRs every week now.”
Schematically, SFIS has always had a handful of skill position players to compete with top 10 teams in their class. The holdup has always been depth, experience and, as Moon puts it, muscle. That’s why he worked tirelessly to get his team’s weight room off the ground.
The execution of plays will happen with time. So, too, will the strength gain from pushing metal plates off your chest.
“Safety is a priority on this football team, and putting these players in a position to be as healthy as they can without being carried off the field is what we’re working on,” Moon said.
The infrastructure is certainly in place to make the Braves better. Thanks to the school’s support, the team has a full-time athletic trainer, all the gear it requires and now it has its weight room.
The signs of progress are evident at practice, even on days when one-third of the varsity roster was missing because of feast day celebrations for their pueblos — like the day Moon showed off his new surroundings.
“You get all the guys in there, it’s like a brotherhood,” said junior two-way starter Phelix Vasquez-Fox. “Doing this, it’s just one more thing to make us feel more like a team.”
If and when it pays off remains to be seen. The Braves open their season Thursday night at Cuba and have challenging nondistrict home games against Socorro and Pojoaque Valley. The Socorro game was a late addition to the schedule and is one that test the Braves in ways the 2-3A will the final four weeks of the season.
“I don’t see any quit; I don’t see any moral deficiency,” Moon said. “Now it’s time to put the pieces of this Rubik’s Cube together.”
Thursday — at Cuba, 7 p.m.
Sept. 2 — at Laguna-Acoma, 7 p.m.
Sept. 9 — Pojoaque Valley, 7 p.m.
Sept. 17 — at McCurdy, 1 p.m.
Sept. 23 — Española Valley, 7 p.m.
Oct. 14 — at Robertson **, 7 p.m.
Oct. 21 — West Las Vegas **, 7 p.m.
Oct. 29 — at St. Michael's **, 1:30 p.m.
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