‘Youngsters of old men’ reunite at Heizer Junior High
In Hobbs, basketball has become the identity
RICH TROUT/NEWS-SUN
Released in May 1988, “Nothin’ But a Good Time” by Poison is still here. The heavy metal hit may still be with the youngsters who played basketball for Heizer Junior High from 1985-88.
Two months ago, the Heizer boys who graduated in 1988 found out the Hobbs Municipal Schools are planning to replace the building as part of a larger project to replace all three middle schools and build a fourth to address student population. In the next several years, the building on East Stanolind Road will be gone.
Max Herrera of Hobbs decided he had to do something.
“It’s been 36 years since we went to the school,” he said.
Wait. Thirty-six years? That’s nearly 40!
Are these old men?
Yes, they are.
“We are the youngsters of the old people,” said John Gilcrease, laughing.
With a wife and two children age 17 and 20, John is the principal of Houston Middle School in Hobbs and played on the Heizer Junior High basketball team.
Max, 52, John, 52, and Eligio Gonzales, 51, principal of Heizer Middle School, are three best friends who’ve transformed into old people as swiftly as a buzzer-beating three-pointer swish.
There are others, too.
On Aug. 10, Max, John and Eligio joined Abel Larranaga, Paul Bosquez, Richard Veyna, Gary Nash, Troy Brewer, Jesse Thompson, Isaac Jacobo, Shawn Williams, Martin Navarrette, Todd Dimmock and Rene Cantu for a Heizer Junior High Reunion of epic proportions none of them will forget.
The “youngsters of old men” felt satisfied, refreshed — even blissful — two days later.
The reunion goers came from Albuquerque, Fort Worth, Houston and Dallas. A player from Hawaii and another from Detroit had to abruptly cancel.
Even Richard Veyna from Houston made it.
“It was nice, just to see how successful they all are,” Max said. “We’re all living the dream, even if it’s not exactly the way we envisioned. Our success today goes along with the success we had in junior high.
“We’re going to try to meet again. At the next reunion, we plan on doing a little five on five — with wrapped up knees and ankle braces and all that stuff.”
The junior high on Stanolind closed in May 2002 and reopened as the Hobbs Freshman High School in August 2002. Freshman used the building from 2002 to May 2011.
The building on East Stanolind sat vacant for a full year, reopening as Heizer Middle School with sixth seventh, and eighth grade instead of seventh and eighth, as Heizer Junior High had been.
Pure joy in Hobbs basketball
Before their memories start fading away like “Nothin’ But a Good Time” did, Max, John and Eligio spoke and reminisced with the unadulterated joy only youngsters can muster — if youngsters can reminisce.
Nineteen eighty-eight was the summer before the teens began playing basketball for the respected Head Varsity Coach Mike Smith of Hobbs High School.
Hobbs Schools hired Smith after Russ Gilmore left. Smith coached Hobbs basketball 2012-2017. Smith ended his best season in 2014-15 with a 30-2 record.
Russ Gilmore was the varsity coach from 1999 to 2011. Gilmore’s team went undefeated in his coaching season (27-0). Gilmore did not fill Ralph Tasker’s place — no one can.
For 38 years, 1950-1998, Ralph Tasker served as head coach, leaving with a 19-8 record his final year. Tasker’s winningest season was 1981 at 26-0. The year before, the Hobbs Eagles were 27-2.
Tasker coached for 53 seasons at Sulpher Springs, Ohio, Lovington, N.M., and most notably at Hobbs, where he compiled 1,122 victories against 291 defeats, with 11 state titles and only two losing seasons.
Hobbs High School basketball’s top five longest winning streaks were in 1965-67, 53 wins; 1979-82, 49 wins; 1955-57, 30 wins; 1967-68, 29 wins; 1998-99, 28 wins; and 1962-63, 27 wins.
Holding the title of legend is the least the community could do for Ralph Tasker.
Shelby Reeves became head coach in 2019 and retired in 2023. Ronald Ross is the current varsity coach.
Tracy Hill, another Heizer alum, one who missed the reunion, was best friends with C.J. Hutchings from before he can remember.
“We were a very tight knit group,” Tracy said about the team. “We didn’t win the border conference in our eighth-grade year because a couple of us got in trouble.”
The guilty party was Tracy and C.J.
“The last game of the regular season, me and C.J. busted out a bunch of windows on Artesia’s bus. We weren’t saints,” Tracy said.
C.J. had been the most honorable guy he’s ever known, Tracy said.
“If you had C.J. as a friend, he was a friend for life,” Tracy said.
“I still talk about those times growing up,” he continued. “We were such good athletes because all we did was play sports. We were always together, and to this day we still talk about the number of athletes we grew up with.”
Timmy Smith’s brother, Mike, was their coach; Tracy said Timmy still holds the Superbowl rushing record.
“He said he only played football because he didn’t want to go through Coach Tasker’s preseason workouts,” Tracy said, laughing. “Mike was our coach in the ninth grade, and we hung out together at the Boys Club.”
Things were great until they lost C.J.
“He was buried on my birthday in 1996,” Tracy said. “My oldest son, I named him Cristopher Jalen Hill.”
C.J. Hill will turn 27 later this month. Tracy’s other son, Christian, is 24.
“He was one of the best athletes you ever wanted to see,” Tracy said about his best friend. “He played quarterback on football, he was a point guard, and he anchored the relays on track. He was just an all-around great athlete.”
Eligio Gonzales, the shortest Heizer player then, is in his fourth year as principal of Heizer Middle School. Previously, Eligio was assistant principal at Houston Middle School in Hobbs.
“It was great seeing friends I haven’t seen in many, many years,” Eligio said. “Some of them I see quite often, but it was great seeing the guys I haven’t seen in many years, and being able to walk through Heizer Middle School, going to the locker room, and walking on the basketball court.”
Eligio recalled being only 5’1”, possibly 5’2” in junior high.
“I was short,” he said, “but I worked harder than anyone else. I played in high school under Coach Tasker. I didn’t start. I was the 6th man on the high school team.”
Was their time as Heizer Hornets and Hobbs Eagles worth it?
“Me personally, playing sports is probably the only thing that got me through school,” Max said. “I had to keep my grade-point average to play.”
Meanwhile, John got so carried up in nostalgia and reminiscing that he continued talking, and talking, and talking, as if he didn’t want the memories to fade Monday night.
Late in the hour-long conversation, he started to choke up.
The press becomes their identity
John said the key to Hobbs basketball was the press, not the offense.
“Smith taught us how to press,” he said. “We were all able to play super defense, he taught us to play defense very well. That’s what enabled us to win the Border Conference.”
The Border Conference included Heizer, Houston and Highland junior highs in Hobbs, and Lovington, Carlsbad and Artesia.
The press not only became the strategy Tasker enforced every year, but it also became the strategy Hobbs junior highs and grade schools started using.
“Once you get there (in high school), you’re already prepared for it,” said Bobby Brooks, 40, of Hobbs.
Bobby played for Heizer Junior High from 1996-98.
The Hobbs High School players are recruited in their junior high years, sometimes in grade school, Bobby said.
Almost 25 years ago, Bobby played forward due to his stature. Bobby had no doubt the school rooted positive values in him. He had to maintain a C average to play.
“We had some of the best players (in Hobbs) on the team,” Bobby said Tuesday. “Every school had its main stars, that’s for sure.”
Their number one player was Ronald Ross, who in April became the head varsity coach of Hobbs High School.
“On our team, Ronald Ross was definitely the best player,” Bobby said, pausing. “He’s the best player of the whole time.”
His years at Heizer prevented Bobby from running the streets, he said.
“That’s for sure,” Bobby said. “Playing sports, and after that I attended the Boys Club, so I kept my time occupied.”
The fun of playing is the bright spot he will always remember, Bobby said.
“We always had fun, that’s for sure, that’s the thing I can always tell you. We always had fun.”
Back in his day, Bobby said, the negative aspects of Hobbs were not as pronounced.
The intensity of the Hobbs culture’s full-court press was too much for him, Bobby said, noting he did not play high school ball because “they had three practices a day.”
Bobby’s last year at Heizer Junior High was his last playing basketball for fun.
Giving them something to do
From the 1988 Heizer graduates to a 1999 graduate, his aunt, Evelyn Rising, and Joe Cotton, the President of the NAACP in Hobbs, the resonance of basketball in the lives of young people here cannot be overestimated.
Still, these individuals also know Hobbs is not ideal — now or decades ago.
Joe said Hobbs basketball has lost some of its shine since the Heizer team played together in 1988.
“I know I moved here in 1981, and I think basketball was a stronghold,” he said. “And I think it gave a lot of the black kids, the African-American kids, something to do.”
“Basketball is a lifeblood to Lea County,” Evelyn said, “and to the communities surrounding Lea County. It’s because everyone looks forward to it, they are very supportive of each other. It’s recognition of — no matter where you are, whether you’re in a grocery store, you’re in a doctor’s office, just driving down the street and your car comes up to someone else’s, it’s like, ‘Oh yeah, that’s a current basketball player on the rise, and we’ve got to support them.”
Because the African-American youth were passionate about basketball, Cotton said the sport helped mold a lot of them.
“It kept them in school because they looked forward to that sport,” he said. “And a lot of them really, really had the utmost respect for Coach Tasker and his relationship with the athletes.”
Cotton recently talked to his cousin, Rob Evans, about the state of Hobbs.
“You take people like Rob, you take people like Tony Benford, and you take other guys who played sports, they went on to have great careers,” Cotton said.
Speaking from the perspective of the black community, Cotton said Lea County needs to return to those times of character and grit.
“A lot of times there wasn’t enough for young black people to do,” he said, “so they grabbed on to that sport, and that kept them busy, and it kept them out of trouble, and that’s where we have to get back to. We need to get our young kids back into athletics, to give them something to work for. They work harder in school because they know they have the sport.”
The downturn
About 2005, 2006, is when the community did not have the same passion for basketball as it once did, Cotton said.
“By 2009, it was taking a whole different angle,” he said. “And some people would say, after Coach Tasker passed, things started changing because so many kids — they wanted to play for him. They wanted him to be a part of their lives. And you don’t find coaches like Coach Tasker anymore.
“You have to care about the kids, you really do. Not just about winning, but you have to care about them, their home life, their education and everything in order to get the production.”
It’s natural for adults to not care about their kids after the kids leave home, Cotton said.
“I don’t think coaching is just a job,” he said. “Because you do a little parenting, you do a little counseling, guidance, it all goes hand in hand, and that’s what kids look for.”
Houston Principal John Gilcrease emphasized basketball’s continuing role in his life.
“It did have a major impact,” John said. “For example, we played at Heizer under Mike Smith, who taught us to work harder than everyone else. He would open the gym on holidays — Thanksgiving and Christmas — and had his brothers serve as mentors.”
Max said all of Heizer’s players came from the west and south sides of town.
“It’s where a lot of us were born and raised,” he said. “We all came together as one unit, one team, and we still keep in contact. You don’t hear of that very often.”
The pure joy of playing a sport is what Bobby latches on to.
“To me, it was just having fun,” he said.
Bobby has a 15-year-old son, Christian, whom he described as a good basketball player.
“He’s always raving about his shot, that’s for sure,” Bobby said with fatherly pride. “He practices every day. He’s always playing.”
As for anything else Bobby had to say about 25 years ago, he only had this:
“Heizer was a good school when I was there, that’s for sure.”
Bobby plans to attend his 25th high school reunion next year. By then he could be one of the youngsters of old men.
Kids need more than just going to school and being in class, Cotton said.
“They need something else,” he said. “If all a child is doing is going to school and going home, that’s not enough today. They need something else.”
Evelyn could not contain her joy in expressing her thoughts on basketball.
“I love basketball,” she said, “but I need to be a stronger community advocate. I need to start purchasing tickets and going to the games. I need to let the players and coaches know I’m here for them.”
