Pueblo High School’s football team hosted its fifth annual White-Out game on Sept. 4 against the Marana Tigers. The Warriors were victorious over the Division III Tigers; the final score was a nail-biting 28-27.
Coach Brandon Sanders said, “I wanted to start them [Pueblo] with a tough schedule right off the bat to see what we were made of, and while it wasn’t pretty, I’m proud of the total team effort we gave Friday night.”
Senior Justin Pledger said, “The win over Marana was not an individual victory; it was a team victory, and we would not have won without everyone doing their parts.”
Former Coach Adrian Koch began the tradition of the first game having the theme of White Out in 2011. Many Pueblo faculty, staff, and students participated in the tradition by wearing white to school and the football game in support of the varsity football team.
“I have gone to the White-Out game every year since I was a freshman,” said senior Cristian Coronado.“This year was by the far the most spirited student section. We participated in chants, painted our faces and bodies, and we even threw baby powder up in the air when our team scored their first touchdown.”
Up next for the Warriors are the Flowing Wells’ Caballeros on September 11.
Pledger said, “This is a big game for the team. If we get this win, other teams have to watch out because Flowing Wells is predicted to take State in our division.”
More than one thousand Pueblo students participated in this year’s Card Castle Building Leadership activity on Friday, Aug. 14, during all seven periods, in an effort to increase team work, bring about self-awareness and learn campus responsibility.
Ms. Marie Little, auto teacher, brought this activity to Pueblo from previous trainings at various other schools. A year ago, she asked her CTE (Career and Technical Education) colleagues to take it on as a group lesson in order to reach more students.
“Mr. Mario Reyes [an intervention specialist at Pueblo] and I did this same project at Howenstine High Magnet School with the entire campus as part of a community-building activity, and it was wildly successful,” Little said. “It made a lot of sense to bring it to Pueblo.”
Mr. Pete Pederson, who teaches graphic arts and yearbook, delivered the debriefing at the end of each period, which provided our students a deeply meaning of the day’s activities.
Junior Alejandro Carrazco said, “After Mr. Pederson debriefed us, I fully understand the learning objective of the activity. We were here to learn and understand that we can overcome our obstacles. We weren’t able to talk, but we learned through other means to communicate.” He paused and said, “We learned that there are alternative ways to talk to one another.”
All students of CTE teachers and Ms. Kari Warner [student council advisor/science teacher] participated in this event.
After a dozen years as a science teacher at Pueblo Magnet High School, Mr. James Uomoto decided to retire last month at the end of the first semester —or, as he would prefer to call it: “to switch his focus.”
Since ’02, Uomoto taught freshman integrated science and physics. He occasionally interjected to his students not only his enthusiasm for his subject matter, but his passion for his other job—owning and maintaining a motorized bicycle shop, which he affectionately calls “U-MOTO Motorized Bicycles”.
“I am not actually retiring,” Uomoto asserted. “I’m just transitioning to my business full-time.”
Although excited for the success of his bike business, Uomoto said that he could not deny his sadness about leaving Pueblo, his home, after 12 years.
“I will definitely miss helping students grow and achieve, being part of the process of helping student better themselves,” he said. “I’m also going to miss the faculty and staff here at Pueblo because they are truly the standard of excellent education.”
Uomoto said that he was inspired by his father, an Amphi Middle School teacher, to become an educator after witnessing the joy that his students brought to him.
He added that education is not a particularly easy field to dive into, but wants future educators to know some of the most valuable lessons he has learned while at Pueblo.
“You [new teachers] definitely need to develop a sense of humor early on,” Uomoto said, “and don’t take things to seriously or you’ll go crazy!”
“Teaching always comes with its share of challenges,” he said. Uomoto’s biggest challenge, he said,” was finding new ways to inspire students and to engage them intellectually.”
“The challenge is to motivate students to find the answers as to why they need to pursue education in life,” he said. “It’s a good challenge, though, don’t get me wrong. Anything in life worth doing is a challenge, and I appreciate it because it has helped me become better at my craft.
With a heavy heart, Pueblo Magnet High School says its goodbyes to Mr. James Uomoto and wishes him luck in all of his future endeavors.
If you would like to learn more about U-MOTO Bicycles, visit umotobikes.com.
Pueblo will look to stretch their winning streak to four straight games Friday night when the Warriors host Nogales in a Week 5 high school football matchup.
Pueblo (3-1) opened the season with a late one-point loss at Amphi but has rolled off victories over Santa Rita, Rio Rico and Rincon.
The Warriors are led by 1st-year head coach Brandon Sanders, a former Arizona Wildcats defensive star who made it to the NFL with the New York Giants.
The Apaches enter at 2-2 having won two straight over Douglas and Cholla.
Nogales at Pueblo is our Overtime Game of the Week. David Kelly will be lives from the south side with a report in during the KOLD News 13 at 6 and you can see the game highlights Friday night on Overtime which kickoffs on KOLD News 13 at 10:20 p.m.
Jorge Romero (Class of 2016)
Pueblo’s Memo Berube and Jorge Romero both had doubts about their football team coming into this season. In fact, Berube, a senior, was toying with the idea of hanging up his cleats for good.
He’s glad he didn’t.
In just four games, Pueblo (3-1) has already matched its win total from each of the last three seasons. Furthermore, a win tonight would mark just the second time in the last 10 years the Warriors have registered four victories in a season.
“I’ve never felt this great during football,” said Berube, who missed most of last season with a left knee injury. “I wasn’t expecting as good of a season so far and came into the spring with some doubts.”
First-year coach Brandon Sanders and the Warriors host Nogales tonight at 7 with a chance to win their fourth straight game — a rarity in itself for Pueblo recently.
To make sure his players aren’t coming into the game overconfident, Sanders has reminded them that they haven’t been within 49 points of the Apaches in the last two years.
Nogales (2-2) has won seven straight meetings between the schools, most recently with a 56-0 win 2013, and holds a 14-6 advantage in the series. The last time Pueblo topped the Apaches was in 2000.
Coach Brandon Sanders
“That’s a major mountain for these kids,” said Sanders, a member of the UA’s “Desert Swarm” defense in the mid-1990s and a former NFL player. “We don’t shy away from anything; we recognize it, we own up to it and we step up to take on the challenge.
“That’s what I want to see: Can we step up to the challenge to play?”
The Warriors have already conquered one challenge this season, scoring two touchdowns in the fourth quarter to rally against Santa Rita in Week 2. Since then, Pueblo has outscored opponents 81-12 in two games.
“It transitioned from the field to the locker room,” said Romero, a junior who leads the team with 581 yards rushing and six touchdowns. “You should have seen the lock room; there was so much adrenaline, you could see that we wanted to play.”
Since taking over last spring, Sanders has reconnected with Pueblo’s storied past. Former coach Curly Santa Cruz is among those who Sanders has brought in to speak with the team. After all, Santa Cruz spent 15 years with the program and was the last one to lead the Warriors to the state playoffs, in 1990. The way Romero sees it, however, that’s about to change.
“A lot of people have high expectations for us but there’s also still a lot of low,” Romero said. “We had doubts from a lot of people coming into the season but we’re ready to prove them wrong.”
Congratulations to the following students for their work in partnering with the House of Neighborly Service (33rd street & 8th Avenue) and providing a garden and it’s produce for elementary age students all the way up to Sr. Citizens to enjoy. They prepared the garden and planted it in September and the garden is still going strong.
Warriors Volunteer Their Time
The team consisted of Mario Acosta, Mina Van Gorder, Bernadette Romero, Conrad Jones, Joey Caicedo, Anyssa Garcia, Marina Padilla, Ezra Valenzuela and Eddie Flores
Many thanks to Maria Bicknell, Dolores Carrion, Travis Klein, Lolly Levine, Liz Raizk, Elaine Straub, Emma Tarazon, and our partners at HNS, Josefina Ahumada and Michele Orduna for making the garden a reality for the community.
For Salma Reyes-Flores, the dream of becoming a pediatrician just got a little closer. Reyes-Flores, a Class of 2014 Senior at Pueblo Magnet High School, is one of only 10 students in the state to be named a Baird Scholar and to receive a four-year scholarship to the University of Arizona’s Honors College.
The scholarship is for $10,000 each year and is renewable for four years. To earn the scholarship, Reyes-Flores wrote essays, provided letters of recommendation and met ACT score and sustained a top-notch GPA. That last one hasn’t always been easy.
Reyes-Flores is close to her father. He’s a big support for her, and he goes away for long periods to work in the fishing ship industry.
“It’s hard when he’s gone,” Reyes-Flores said. “I don’t feel like I can do much.”
Family is important to the soft-spoken senior. She has two older brothers who attend the University of Arizona, and she knew that was the school for her, too. She wants to be close to home.
While Reyes-Flores hasn’t yet identified her undergrad major, she knows it will in the sciences. She said the science instructors at Pueblo have inspired her.
“I wasn’t really into science before high school. When I came here, I really got into it,” she said.
Reyes-Flores said she didn’t realize the scholarship was possible until Ruben Romero, Pueblo’s college and career coordinator, told her about it.
Romero said one of the remarkable things about Reyes-Flores is what she has achieved at her age. At 16, she is younger than her peers, yet she performs at a high level.
“She has always been focused. She’s quiet, but confidently quiet,” he said. “She has always been at the top of her class.”
