The Bernalillo football team won a state playoff game for the first time this past season and also finished 8-4 for the most wins the program has had in at least twenty years, if not ever.
Because of that success, Spartans head football coach John Cobos earned the All-Metro 3A-5A Coach of the Year award. However, Cobos said it’s not really his honor, but something the entire program – including those behind the scenes – should share. “To me, it’s not about me,” he said. “It’s not a one-person award. This belongs to my assistant coaches, my wife, my kids who share me with the team, and all the players.”
Cobos and the Spartans also earned the award in the abbreviated COVID season in the spring of 2021 when Bernalillo went 4-0. Excluding the COVID season, the Spartans have been in the playoffs for four of the past five seasons, but it took some time for Cobos to get the Bernalillo program going. He has a career mark of 35-51, but was just 4-25 in his first three seasons as Bernalillo was known primarily as a basketball school.
“It’s been a change in culture,” he said. “Everything was about Bernalillo as a basketball community, which I get. But I wanted to know why we can’t be good at athletics?” His desire to add athletes from other sports paid off when the basketball players started coming out for football. “Basketball coach Terry Darnell, he was very supportive,” Cobos recalled. “I told the kids that the strength and conditioning that we do and the plyometrics was going to help them come basketball season.”
Adding that athleticism helped the basketball program immensely and also turned the program’s mindset.“These kids are buying what we’re selling,” Cobos said. “It’s the change of culture. We’re not a gang, we’re a football team. Our expectations are a 3.0 (grade-point average). We want them to have a 3.0. It’s easier for our guys to be recruited. We’re starting to think of success when they leave Bernalillo. We have huge expectations for our kids.”Another big change was encouraging athletes from the area pueblos to try football, he said.
“We have somebody from San Felipe, Santo Domingo, Cochiti, Zia, all of these different pueblos and they’re proud,” Cobos said. “We told them they’re not just representing Bernalillo, but they’re representing their pueblo.” Another important factor in the program’s surge was getting the locals to buy in. “The support of the community and our administration has been tremendous,” he said. “The town of Bernalillo is proud of us. They’re bringing us into the school board meeting this week to congratulate our kids. ”What it takes, Cobos said, is a staff dedicated to making the players feel special in what has now become a year-round commitment to being better. “The kids really know we care about them,” he said. “And my staff cares about them. We work them hard and it’s not easy. We go from football to powerlifting to track and the coaches coach all three sports. It’s a year-round program.”
Cobos is a Roswell High School alum who played football at New Mexico Highlands and got his start coaching at West Las Vegas. Then he stepped away from the sport for quite some time before he was lured back to start essentially at the bottom rung at Bernalillo 16 years ago. He worked himself up to a coordinator position, then Cobos has been head coach for the past nine seasons. “We are very excited and very proud of Coach Cobos,” Spartans athletic director Ira Harge said. “He’s done an amazing job. Over the 16 years, it’s been a series of ups and downs, but he set school history by making it past the first round of state. We couldn’t be more proud of him. We are definitely not just a basketball school anymore. We’re a football school now.”
With 41 players coming back, Cobos said he just sees the program just continuing to climb. “I’m no longer the red-headed stepchild when I talk with the other coaches,” he said. “It’s been a great ride.”