Cisco College in ESPN's "Game of the Week"

By Linda Spetter

 

When the Cisco College Wranglers met the New Mexico MIlitary Institute Broncos in Roswell Saturday for the ESPN "Game of the Week," not even the ESPN announcers could have predicted that the Wranglers would walk away with a 21-10 victory, as the announcers admitted over the air.

Not too long ago, 2021, the Broncos were the national champions. Ironically, their only loss that year was to the Cisco Wranglers.

Defensive Coordinator Charlie Rizzio was obviously proud of the Wranglers defensive crew. "Defensively, Cisco held NMMI to their lowest point total of the year, 10 points total," he said. "They were averaging 30 going in."

The Cisco Defense came up with 5 sacks and 3 turnovers, and Linebackers Malakhi Kellough and Jasen Stephens led the team with 7 and 6 tackles, respectively.

The Offense also came through with shining colors, but not until the second quarter. "The first drive of the game NMMI went 15 plays down the field, ate up a bunch of clock, and just kind of wore us out defensively," Rizzio said. "Really, I kinda thought it was going to be a long day. But we held them to a field goal. So it was 3-0."

"Then we went to punt, and they roughed our punter, so that was an automatic first down. And we were able to get the ball in the endzone on that drive with a touchdown from quarterback Christian Kaopua to Raylan Hubbard. So then the score was 7-3."

After that, the Wranglers recovered a fumble on kickoff. That's where Jayshon Powers came in and sparked the offensive ground game with 88 yards. "He entered the game in a reserve role, and came in at running back, and really did a great job for us, running the ball. And he ended up getting our second touchdown, which was in the second quarter with about a minute 42 left, to put us up 14-3."

From there the teams had quite a bit of back and forth in field position. Freshman punter David Michel "had a number of crucial punts for us that were really integral in the field position battle," Coach Rizzio said. "He did a good job, and our punt unit in general did a good job covering the kicks."

"Then, in the fourth quarter, with about 11:30 left in the game, Christian Kaopua threw his second touchdown pass to Corey Sandolph. And that put us up 21-3."

The two teams exchanged punts back and forth, and then NMMI scored their final touchdown at the end of the game. "With about 38 seconds left, they scored a touchdown to get their score up to 10."

Coach Rizzio said, "Defensively, I always tell our guys, on paper, you're supposed to lose almost every game. But it's a good thing for us that the game isn't played on paper. It's played on the football field."

He praised the Wranglers team as "a resilient group of kids across the board – offense, defense, special teams. They've been working really hard trying to understand how we do things here now with the new staff and what Coach Lee has put in place. And it's refreshing to see them get to experience some success."

He said that Head Coach Stephen Lee "has been preaching to our staff and to the players and to everybody, we're not looking for results right now, we're looking to change behavior and work ethic and teach some discipline and accountability. If you're able to do that, and you're able to win a couple of games, then that's even better."

"Really, we're just trying to get these kids to learn how to be mature young men," Coach Rizzio said. "They're not all perfect, nobody is, but by and large, as a collective group, they've done a really nice job. It's fun to watch."

He said that as a defensive coach, "You just do the best you can and try to prepare them, you stress and worry over every possible thing that an offense can do, and then a whole week of preparation, and then it comes down to . . . you really don't have any control on game day. They play the game, so you're just kind of a spectator."

The Wranglers are now 3-2 in conference play, and 4-2 overall. They play their last home game against Tyler Junior College at 1 p.m. this Saturday, and a week later they will travel to Navarro for the final game of the regular conference season.