Welcome to our new web site!

To give our readers a chance to experience all that our new website has to offer, we have made all content freely avaiable, through October 1, 2018.

During this time, print and digital subscribers will not need to log in to view our stories or e-editions.

WRESTLING

December wrestling tournament is Las Cruces High’s 50th

Posted

Las Cruces High School is celebrating its 50th high school wrestling tournament this December, and Coach Kevin Marks has been around for close to half of them.

The tournament will be 11:30 a.m.-8 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 13 and 9 a.m.-5 p.m. on Saturday, Dec. 14 in both gymnasiums at LCHS, 1755 El Paseo Road. The gyms are located on the northwest side of the school, near the tennis courts just off Boutz Road.

Tickets are $5 for adults and $3 for students.

The event will include at least 36 teams, including teams from all four Las Cruces public high schools: LCHS, Mayfield, Oñate and Centennial. There will also be state champion teams from other parts of New Mexico, El Paso and Arizona.

“It’s one of the largest tournaments in the Southwest,” said Marks, who became an assistant wrestling coach at LCHS in 1992 when Robert Aranda was head coach. Marks took over the program about three years later, he said. He retired from teaching after 25 years as an English teacher at LCHS, where he continues as wrestling coach, assisted by Tim Bravo and Jimmy Nevarez III, who was a three-time state wrestling champion at Mayfield High School.

The LCHS wrestling tournament was started by then-Las Cruces High Head Wrestling Coach Harold Harrison in 1969. It began with six teams, included 16 teams in 1995 and has had to up 40 in a single year.

“We’ve always prided ourselves on trying to continue the tradition that Coach Harrison started,” Marks said. It’s one of the earliest tournaments in the wrestling season, which began for Las Cruces schools in November, and gives all participating teams an opportunity to prepare for the second half of the season, which starts after the winter holiday.

Because of issues with LCPS’ computer system, Marks said the format this year will be a duals tournament, with pool play among teams on Friday, Dec. 13, and elimination brackets leading to tournament winner on Saturday, Dec. 14. The duals format is more family friendly, Marks said, because it allows for exact starting teams to be set for each competing team.

This year’s LCHS wrestling team includes 35-40 wrestlers, Marks said, including just three seniors and five juniors. “We’re really young but we have some quality wrestlers,” he said. The team includes a freshman who placed second at state and fifth nationally last year, and three other returning team members who placed third and sixth at state in their weight classes, Marks said.

The team also includes five eighth graders, who are eligible to wrestle at the high school level. That’s important, Marks said, because it helps prepare eighth graders for the larger high school environment. “Eighth-grade wrestling really has a great impact,” he said.  

“I’m pretty proud of what we’ve developed. It’s a great tournament.”

Marks wrestled in Las Cruces before moving to Gallup, where he attended high school. He returned to Las Cruces to attend New Mexico State University and join the faculty at LCHS.

For more information, call Las Cruces High School at 575-527-9400.


X