Jul. 17—The New Mexico High School Coaches Association Hall of Honor is growing by four members this weekend, including the man who ran the association for 16 years before his death.
The NMHSCA’s annual convention gets going in earnest on Friday at the Albuquerque Convention Center, with the weekend concluding with a formal induction of the group’s Hall of Honor Class of 2025 on Saturday night.
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Current Eldorado football coach Charlie Dotson is one of the four inductees; he’s had a lengthy and successful career coaching both wrestling and football in Albuquerque Public Schools.
The late Marilyn Sepulveda, one of the state’s track and field/cross country coaching giants, is at last getting recognition into this particular Hall.
The former executive director of the NMHSCA, Buster Mabrey, who died last December, is being inducted, and this surely will make for an emotional scene Saturday night given Mabrey’s longtime commitment to the NMHSCA and his popularity with the New Mexico coaching fraternities he served so faithfully.
The fourth inductee is Tommy Standefer, a former Clovis High athlete who went on to coach football both in college and in Alamogordo, and also has enjoyed stellar results as Alamo’s longtime golf coach.
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Dotson, 56, has three state championships as a wrestling coach — two at Del Norte, where Diego Sanchez, a prominent MMA fighter, was one of his athletes, and a third at Eldorado.
Dotson also has coached the Eagles to two state championship football games, in 2008 and 2015.
“Selected by your peers … it’s special,” Dotson said. “And it means a lot.”
Many track and cross country coaches have for years wanted to see Sepulveda gain entry into the NMHSCA Hall of Honor. But the association had a stipulation that no one could be inducted without 20 years service in New Mexico. Sepulveda died of cancer in 1989, before she got to 20.
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This bylaw was tweaked not long ago, giving the NMSCA the flexibility to consider a worthy candidate like Sepulveda.
(This particular change will almost surely open the door for at least two other coaches — former Eldorado girls basketball coach Don Flanagan and former Artesia football coach L.G. Henderson — to gain HOH entry in future years.)
Sepulveda was a coaching staple in Alamogordo. She was the first woman in New Mexico to coach both boys and girls cross country. She won a state girls track and field title with the Tigers, and four other times Alamogordo was a state runner-up.
She also was one of the driving forces behind the creation of the New Mexico Track and Cross Country Coaches Association, and was its first president. She is on Alamogordo’s Wall of Fame, and her name headlines one of the track season’s most important regular-season events, the Meet of Champions at UNM.
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Mabrey’s induction comes seven months after his death. He was a tireless advocate for coaches and athletes alike, and the NMHSCA annual convention was quite literally his baby to oversee for many years.
“(Buster) was generally the face of high school sports, besides the NMAA,” Dotson said of Mabrey. “That’s gonna be tough for coaches this year. It’ll be a bittersweet moment.”
Mabrey, a Hobbs native, did do some football coaching in his career, most notably at Mayfield.
Standefer played football for legendary Clovis football coach Eric Roanhaus, and had a hand in the Wildcats’ 1981-85 championship dynasty. His football coaching career began at Eastern New Mexico, and he later joined Alamogordo’s staff in 1993. He is a former Tigers’ head coach.
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Coaching golf, Alamogordo has four blue trophies, and the Tigers produced six individual state champions on the course.
Among the other awards being handed out this weekend:
Mabrey is being given the Distinguished Service Award which bears his name.
Eric Jack, from Rio Rancho High, is receiving the Ralph Bowyer Coaching for Character Award after stepping in and coaching the Rams girls basketball program last season as Lori Mabrey, Buster’s wife, stepped away to be by her husband’s side during his lengthy illness and hospitalization.
Todd Resch of Rio Rancho Public Schools is being honored as the Athletic Director of the Year.
NFL referee Carl Cheffers is this year’s convention keynote speaker.
