Yodice: Artesia and Lovington, back where they belong

Artesia and Lovington. True dance partners once again.

We are a few days out from their next football samba, Friday night in Lovington.

And it’s difficult to overstate the weight of this meeting. We’re talking not just about the teams ranked No. 1 (Lovington) and No. 2 (Artesia) in Class 5A football, we are talking about the two schools who lead New Mexico in state championships.

Artesia has 32, Lovington 20.

But even more than that, we’re talking decades of head-to-head history here, with two cities and fan bases that crave the intensity of this particular game.

Sure, Artesia has natural rivalries to the north with Roswell and Goddard, and there is also the revered Eddy County War game with Carlsbad to the south. But Lovington always hits differently.

And for the first time in seven years, this is a district matchup. And everything seems just right — doesn’t it? — when the the stakes are raised like they are this week. This matchup, for me, is the pure definition of football in southeastern New Mexico.

“It has kind of renewed that old spirit of things,” Artesia coach Jeremy Maupin said.

These two belonging to the same league certainly creates additional spice to a rivalry that is already great and deeply meaningful to both communities.

“For a long time,” first-year Wildcats head coach Josh Bailey said, “beating Artesia is kind of what separates the greatest teams of all time from others (in Lovington).”

Lovington was bumped up from Class 4A, where it won state last year, to 5A because of enrollment numbers. And the Wildcats have been utterly fantastic, starting 5-0 with quality wins over Hobbs and Carlsbad, plus Goddard and Roswell, and also former 4A rival Portales. They are thriving with this class promotion.

Artesia is 3-2, having scored 121 combined points in wins the last two games over Deming and Gadsden. Both head coaches in this game realize the formidable task in front of them, plus the historical perspective to boot.

“All we were taught is, that was our main rival,” Bailey said of the Bulldogs.

Ironically, among the combined 52 state titles between the two, there is also a shared championship. It was, I can attest as the onsite Journal reporter for that game, one of the most memorable and famous — borderline infamous — title games in the state’s history.

The 1987 championship game was played in Lovington, when Brian Urlacher (Class of 1996) was still many years away from wearing Wildcat colors, and long before Lovington installed that bright blue turf.

The game? It finished in a scoreless tie. 0-0. And yes, it was as bizarre as it sounds. This was the game, I am sure, that got the state to change its rules about having championship football games end in a tie. It was a strange, bittersweet and completely odd experience for everyone who was there.

The cities are separated by only 65 miles, and you can be certain Artesia’s fans will burn plenty of rubber on Friday.

“The big games need to be the district games, the ones you need to win,” said Cooper Henderson, Artesia’s longtime coach who left the coaching ranks a few years ago.

Bailey said this will be his first exposure to the rivalry as a coach; he is a former Wildcat player.

Maupin is a former Artesia Bulldog, so he grew up with a full grasp of the nature of this rivalry. It does, admittedly, lose some of the luster when the teams are in different classifications. This will surely be one of the most anticipated meetings in the series’ long history which spans seven decades.

But Friday’s winner has the inside track to a district championship, as both are 2-0 in District 2-5A. And who knows, it might not even be the last time they face each other this fall.

“It kind of does feel right being back in the same district with Artesia,” Bailey said.

“We’re excited to go down there,” Maupin said.