WARRIORS RISING: Ruidoso football team part of healing process in wake of devastating fires and floods

RUIDOSO — The scars are not easily visible along Sudderth Drive, the busiest road in this mountain haven.

Many businesses are open. Texas license plates are everywhere you look, which is standard. And despite all that has occurred this summer, there remains an addictive serenity here among the pines.

But of course, this description is, to a certain degree, and to borrow a football term, a bit of misdirection. The scars are there, and Ruidoso is not at peace. Not yet. Not nearly yet. One of New Mexico’s loveliest settings has been disfigured considerably. First by fire, then by floods.

And the town is hurting. That includes the local high school football team, the Ruidoso Warriors.

“It was pretty rough,” said Trenton Hall, a senior running back and safety. “A lot of sleepless nights, just thinking about how everything is going.”

Going back two months, the village of Ruidoso was under forced evacuation because of the encroaching South Fork and Salt fires.

The football players, like all Ruidoso residents, had to pick up and exit quickly, and they scattered. Some to Capitan to the north. Most of them rolled east. To Roswell. Hobbs. Carlsbad. Maybe even West Texas. Away from the savage fires, away from their homes.

“It’s been a rough summer,” said Warriors senior slot receiver/cornerback Mason Zabel. “We’re just trying to overcome adversity.”

And there has, unfortunately, been much of that, including inside the football program, as no fewer than two Ruidoso football players lost their homes to fire.

Sophomore Sam Sanchez is one of those two. He and his father took a Journal reporter and photographer to the site of their home, now a solemn, empty lot to the north of the high school.

“It has been a little difficult rebuilding,” Sanchez said. “It’s a long process.”

For the football players, the recovery road reaches a crucial point Friday night, when Ruidoso visits Eunice in the Warriors’ 2024 season opener.

The fires disrupted Ruidoso’s offseason program for multiple weeks. Now the focus turns, at least partially, to playing games.

“We want to do great and be able to compete for our community, to represent how Ruidoso is a strong town, and we can handle anything,” Hall said.

Adapting, overcoming

More than 1,500 structures and 500 homes in the Ruidoso area were destroyed by the June fires, state Sen. Bill Burt, R-Alamogordo, said. The fires, combined, burned more than 25,000 acres. Summer rains slid off the barren mountainsides and rumbled into town as floodwaters, causing even more damage. In a special legislative session, the state allocated $100 million for recovery efforts.

Greg Crow was agonizingly close to losing his home to fire. “Burned right through my backyard,” he said.

Crow and his family — his wife is a nurse — relocated briefly to Albuquerque in June as everyone anxiously waited to return to learn the fate of their homes.

But he’s also the head football coach at Ruidoso and is the face of the program. He spoke admiringly of how his dozens of athletes kept their composure during an unprecedented crisis.

“I wouldn’t use the word ‘thrive,’ but they have pushed to thrive,” Crow said. “Our new normal has been the fire and the disruption and displacement from that. And the floods. Every day, hearing those (pings) going off on your phone. It certainly messed with the psyche of the whole town. It really has.”

Zabel talked about that day the village’s residents were told to get out.

“It started far away and it just grew and grew and grew, and then you’re evacuating your house,” he said. “You see smoke everywhere, and it was quite frightening.”

From a purely football standpoint, the Warriors are not only a little behind the rest of the state, they could be forgiven if they are not entirely emotionally immersed in their season given the myriad distractions.

But football, big picture, is secondary for coaches and players who have formed what amounts to a huge support group.

“You’re forced to persevere,” Crow said. “And a lot of times, the most amazing things come from that.”

In short, the Warriors are playing for something beyond football.

“They take it personal,” Crow said. “We’re gonna do this for more than ourselves. Usually, it’s just, you do it for the seniors, do it for each other. It’s more than that.”

Several of the teams that are hosting Ruidoso during the season — most notably Cobre — are going to show their appreciation and support. Cobre, located in Bayard, next to Silver City, is planning to feed the entire Ruidoso team and coaching staff, and also any fan that makes the trip later in the season.

Certainly, the experience of the summer has been taxing.

Sam Sanchez and his family don’t have anything left, not that they didn’t try to salvage their home. He and his father, Matt, briefly tried to fight the fire themselves as it encroached on their property, but to no avail.

“As you know, it’s hard to control something that’s burning that hot and moving that fast,” Hall said.

So the Sanchez home is gone now. The family cat, as well, having escaped into the hills, they think. Sam is an accomplished bull rider; and most of his prize buckles were also casualties of the fire.

The family plans to rebuild; Matt Sanchez said some of his neighbors told him they won’t be coming back.

“It has been a little tough. It’s harder to practice,” Sam Sanchez said. “To rebuild and go to practice at the same time.”

Healing process

Spirits remain, on the whole, high, Crow said, despite the trauma Mother Nature inflicted on Ruidoso. The rubble of the Swiss Chalet Inn, a well-known hotel at the north end of town and a site anyone driving into Ruidoso from that direction must pass, is a stark reminder of what happened.

“And we’re still in the middle of it,” Crow said firmly. Approaching storm clouds still make people nervous, he said.

The loss of homes and businesses has been difficult, and the emotional toll many residents continue to confront is almost beyond imagination.

“It was everywhere,” Crow said. “It was the most chaotic thing. ”It’s hard to describe how chaotic and difficult it was.”

Those who escaped disaster are grateful to have both their homes and their lives. As for the teammates who lost their homes, “we’re here for them,” Zabel said.

They are, Crow emphasized, all friends and neighbors, inside the football program and outside of it, and now football can serve as something of a tonic for the village over the next couple of months.

For example, at Ruidoso’s home opener next week against Tularosa, the Warriors will honor first responders from over a dozen agencies as a way to thank them for their efforts.

“We’re not saving this town,” Crow said. “What we’re doing is trying to give it a little sense of normalcy, of belonging, and in that sense, there’s not much pressure there.”

The priority, he said, is that his players go out Friday, and every week, and have fun playing the sport they love.

“Go out there, play our best game and give the town something to cheer for and something to be proud about,” Zabel said. “It’ll be really great for the community to get a break and give them something to take their minds off what is going on. We’re all fired up and ready to go.”

Like almost every town or village in southeastern New Mexico, Ruidoso has only the one high school.

“That in and of itself is special,” Crow said. “When we say Warriors, we’re not talking about the high school. We’re talking about Ruidoso. We’re talking about the community. Our mantra is, that Warrior fight never dies. We’re still fighting.

“We’re not gonna stop fighting, we’re not gonna stop helping each other with whatever we need. It strengthens you, right, when you go through things with other people. It either breaks you or strengthens you. We’re still going through it, we’re still having a tough time, but the community is stronger.”

Hall, whose father Cade is a firefighter and who fought the Ruidoso fires, offered this healthy perspective on Ruidoso’s plight.

“This fire,” he said, “might have knocked us down a little bit. But we’ll for sure fight back. Ruidoso is a strong town, and we can handle anything.”

Ruidoso Warriors prepare for season after ruinous summer