After rapid sellout, ATC moves its debut tournament game to Santa Fe High

Feb. 28—In 15 minutes, Johnny Sheffer's parents were shut out of attending a historic moment for their son and the Academy for Technology and the Classics boys basketball team.

It took that long after the New Mexico Activities Association started selling tickets for the Class 2A State Tournament's opening-round games online at 9 a.m. Tuesday for the game to be sold out at ATC's home gym. With demand outpacing availability, the school resolved that situation by the afternoon, as it worked with Santa Fe Public Schools to use Santa Fe High's Toby Roybal Memorial Gymnasium for Saturday's game against Tatum.

And now Sheffer's parents can watch their son, a senior post on the team, play in the school's first-ever state tournament game. ATC earned that No. 2 seed, thanks to a 23-6 record and winning the District 2-2A regular-season and tournament championships.

"I was in my English class when the link was posted at, like, 9:15," Sheffer said. "And half an hour later, my parents texted me and said, 'Sorry, kid. The tickets are sold out. We'll cheer for you from afar and we'll catch you for one of your later games.

"'Just make sure you win.'"

Phoenix head coach Bobby Romero said the problem was two-fold: A gym that seats only 200 people and accommodations that had to be made for Tatum fans as well as people who purchased the NMAA's state tournament pass. He said the school had to hold 30 percent of the available seats for arriving Coyote fans, which essentially left about 100 tickets for ATC fans to purchase.

"It just put you in that situation where you're up against the fire code and all of that stuff," Romero said.

Adding to the problem is that the gym actually has a capacity of 400, but it can't pull out all of the rows because of a design error when it was built in which the stands overlap the court.

Enter Santa Fe Public Schools. ATC athletic director Vanessa Maryol called district AD Marc Ducharme to see if it could use either Capital's or Santa Fe High's gym for the game. Ducharme said the only potential conflict was with youth wrestling tournaments, but those would be over well before the 4 p.m. start for the basketball game. He also received approval from the NMAA to move the game.

It turns out, Santa Fe High athletic manager LouAnn Padilla got back to Ducharme first. He added the fact Demons head boys basketball coach Zack Cole has a son, eighth grader Cannon Cole, on the team was just coincidence and had nothing to do with moving the game to Santa Fe High.

"We are more than happy to let them use Toby Roybal, especially for their first time [playing in the state tournament]," Ducharme said. "That would be just great for them to put a lot of people in there, rooting for them and, obviously, for Tatum as well. Let's have a good, fun time for them."

In the span of hours, Phoenix and Coyotes fans went to a venue that seats more than 3,500 people, with 2,500 in the lower bowl. Ducharme said he even scheduled the school's Pixellot cameras to broadcast the game on NFHS Network.

Now, the task is to get as many people to the gym.

Sheffer said he and his teammates will hit up classmates, friends and even family members to get them to the game. Romero added he and the school will find ways to advertise and announce the game's new venue to the Santa Fe community. He added that the team has developed a good rapport with players and students from other city schools and he suspects they will get some of them to show up, as well.

"Some of our boys played with the kids from Capital in football, some of them play tennis and other kids that play different sports," Romero said. "So they have friends all over. They come and support each other, and that's been huge."

It has shown as ATC's historic season gathered steam. Romero said most of the home games were sold out, and Sheffer said it made for a great home-court advantage.

"There is such an atmosphere, and it makes everything so much more exciting," Sheffer said. "With last year's game during the [COVID-19] quarantine, we didn't really have fans, and that was just horrible."

It was almost as bad as having his family almost shut out of his team's first postseason appearance.

With that obstacle cleared, the goal is still the same — make sure to win.