Returning Mayfield Baseball to the Ogas Standard

The Ogas Standard

“We’ve had individuals stop and say, ‘I don’t know you. You don’t know me. My kids didn’t go here. But we drive by and we love what you’re doing. We want to help.’””

Rick Montoya, Mayfield baseball

There are moments now, if you stand along the fence line at Mayfield High School, when the place doesn’t feel like a rebuild. It feels like something being reclaimed.

The grass is cut tight. The infield is edged clean. The lines are straight enough that players will argue over who raked them right. Music spills out of a clubhouse that, not long ago, sat dark and forgotten. Just beyond it all, fixed above the field, is a name that has always been there, even when much of what it represented had faded.

Bob Ogas.

These days, it reads less like a label and more like a challenge.

Rick Montoya sees it every time he pulls into the parking lot. He played here and graduated in 1995. He came back as an assistant and then the head coach. When he left the program in 2014, even when it fell short, Mayfield still expected to compete. When he returned a decade later as head coach, that expectation was gone.

He remembers the moment it really hit him — not in a game, but in conversation.

“You know, coming in and meeting last year’s team,” Montoya said, “the expectations were just very low. There was a mindset of, “We’re just not that good. There’s a couple other schools here in town who are way better. We don’t stand a chance against them. And if we get lucky, we might be able to beat these two.’ That was a mindset I just didn’t even fathom.”

The record backed it up. No winning seasons since 2014. A steady slide into the bottom half of the district.

But for Montoya, the deeper issue wasn’t the record. It was the distance between what Mayfield baseball had been—and what it had forgotten.

Because long before the field needed to be rebuilt, the program had been built once already.

In 1971, when Mayfield was still a young school, Ogas started the baseball program from scratch. There was no inherited tradition, no structure waiting for him. Just a blank space and an idea of what it should become.

Within two years, that idea was already taking shape. Mayfield was playing for a state title by 1973. By 1981, it had one.

It remains the only baseball state championship in school history, but inside the program, it represents something larger: proof that the standard Ogas set wasn’t theoretical. It worked.

And more than the trophy, it was the way those teams carried themselves — disciplined, accountable, connected — that became the identity players would talk about for decades.

The “Mayfield Family” wasn’t a slogan. It was the expectation.

When Montoya walked back onto the field years later, that expectation wasn’t visible anymore. The field told the story first. Dead grass. Broken cages. Water lines shut off instead of repaired.

He remembers standing there, trying to reconcile it.

“Thinking back to 2014,” he said, “it was like, this is not how I left it. What happened?”

Then he looked up. The name was still there.

“I didn’t have one player here who knew who Bob Ogas was or what he did,” Montoya said. “All they knew is that name was on the sign.”

That disconnect became the starting point. The rebuild didn’t begin with baseball. It began with dirt, shovels, rakes, and broken sprinkler heads. It included long days of work that didn’t look anything like practice.

Montoya calls them “power digs.”

“When I first talked about that,” he said, “they thought it was a conditioning program. And it ended up being digging holes in the hardest clay you’ll ever dig in your life in this valley.”

At first, the players weren’t sold.

“I had guys walking by saying, ‘I wonder if we’re ever going to take a ground ball. I wonder if we’re ever going to hit. I’m going to graduate knowing how to landscape, but maybe not how to play baseball.’”

But something changed.

“Once they saw the end result,” he said, “there started to become pride.”

It showed up in details — bullpens that held shape, grass that stayed alive, players arguing about how the field should look.

And that’s where Montoya drew the line back to Ogas.

“This is how we practice,” he told them. “This is how we prepare.”

The work didn’t stay contained inside the program. It became visible.

Montoya would show up early, often alone, mowing the field. Same shirt. Same mower. Same routine.

“Every Sunday they’d see the same guy out there,” he said. “And people started asking, ‘Is that you? Are you really out there mowing?’”

It started as curiosity, but it turned into something else.

“I had people say, ‘I can help you. I’ve got better equipment. I can come out a couple times a week.’ And they just started showing up.”

Others brought something different.

“We’ve had individuals stop and say, ‘I don’t know you. You don’t know me. My kids didn’t go here. But we drive by and we love what you’re doing. We want to help.’”

He still shakes his head at that part.

“I’ve been in business for over 30 years,” he said. “No one’s ever given me money for nothing. So, when complete strangers are offering to write a check, I mean… we’re doing something right.”

The fence went up because of that. Then came everything else.

Somewhere in the middle of it, the meaning shifted.

Montoya remembers standing on the field with his son, looking up at the sign.

“And he joked, like, ‘Do you think they’ll ever change it and put your name on it?’” Montoya said.

The answer came quickly.

“There’s only one Bob Ogas,” he said. “And honestly, I wouldn’t want my name on it. Look at it.”

That’s when it hit him.

“How disrespectful it was to Coach Ogas,” he said. “What he did, and then for it to look like that… it just didn’t match.”

That became the promise. Not wins. Not championships. That the field would reflect the name on it again.

Then Ogas showed up. Not for a ceremony, but for the work.

“They’d bring him out,” Montoya said. “We’d be out there fixing things, and he’d sit under an umbrella and watch.”

And still, he coached.

“He’d wave me over, and I’d have to get real close,” Montoya said. “And he’d give me tips. Or tell me I was messing something up. ‘Don’t do that — do it this way.’”

For players who had only known the name, it changed everything.

“It brought what happened 30 years ago to the present,” Montoya said.

A few months later, Ogas was gone. But not before he saw it starting to come back.

The changes carried over to the clubhouse and to the cages. To the way players spent time together.

“At first, they walked right past it,” Montoya said of the renovated clubhouse. “No reaction.”

So he adjusted. He added music, TVs, and food.

“And then it flipped,” he said. “Now they’re in here after practice, hanging out. And then they’re saying, ‘Coach, we’re going to let it cool down and then go hit.’”

That’s when it clicked.

“They could be anywhere,” he said. “And they’re choosing to be here.”

The wins followed. A 10–5 district record. A second-place finish. A playoff run.

For the players, it was validation. For Montoya, it was a reset.

“I told them we’ll never celebrate second place again,” he said. “And maybe I shouldn’t have said that. But it showed how far the expectation had fallen.”

Then he pauses.

“But I was proud of them,” he said. “We understood what it took to get there.”

There are still limitations. Smaller numbers. Fewer players. A campus that doesn’t have the advantages of newer schools.

Montoya can’t change that. What he can change is everything around it.

“If we want it better,” he said, “we’ve got to make it better.”

And increasingly, that’s become the identity. Do more with less. Build it yourself and take pride in it because you earned it.

Walk through the courtyard now, once dirt and weeds, now turf and tables, and you’ll see it.  Players sitting, talking, waiting for the sun to go down so they can head back to the cages.

It doesn’t feel like a program hoping to get better. It feels like one that has big expectations.

And always, right there with them, is that name.

Bob Ogas.

The coach who built the program from nothing in 1971. The one who proved, within a decade, that it could win at the highest level. The one whose standard outlasted the wins themselves.

For a long time, that standard felt like history. Now, it feels like something Mayfield baseball is chasing again.

And for the first time in a while, it’s starting to catch up.

Faces & Places 2026 is the inaugural edition of our new lifestyle magazine. Combined with the fall edition, titled Life is Good in Las Cruces, it is filled with feature content about the people, places, and events that make southern New Mexico special.