Sonny Flores has been playing baseball since he was 3-years-old.
As he approached his final year of the sport, he wanted to make the most of it. His motivation led him to improve every aspect of his game, working with a talented group of seniors to lead Ignacio to its fifth consecutive 2A San Juan League title.
Flores started sports like many kids do, playing tee-ball as a 3-year-old. He worked his way up the pipeline: Two years of tee ball, two years of machine pitch baseball, seven years of kid pitch (essentially a level up where the game becomes more ‘real’), and then began high school.
The Ignacio High School team Flores joined was just beginning its league title streak. The Bobcats had seen a turnaround from 5-9-1 to 15-8 and their first league title the year before Flores joined.
His freshman year saw him only appear in eight out of 23 games as IHS posted a 14-9 record and took its second straight league title. The team was stacked with a very good senior class that included Flores’ cousins, Phillip and Eppie Quintana.
“They taught me everything about positions and how to get more playing time, especially since they were leaving,” Flores said. “So they left it to me.”
Flores’ sophomore year saw him implement those lessons and take on a more significant, but still limited, role in the team. He played many positions, including shortstop, his favorite and the one he had played since he was 8. Flores posted a very respectable .385 batting average in 19 plate appearances and a perfect 1.000 fielding percentage (meaning every chance he had to field a ball, he succeeded).
The team’s success continued, winning their third straight league title with an 18-7 record (including a 5-4 regional playoff win over Rye) and a 7-1 league record.
Flores’ role was much bigger his junior year, with 53 plate appearances. He posted more runs, more RBIs and more hits, with a .220 batting average and a solid .900 fielding percentage. The Bobcats clinched their fourth straight league title, going 15-6 overall and a dominating 10-1 in league play.
As Flores approached his senior year, a new motivation took hold.
“Knowing it was going to be my last year ever doing high school sports … I wanted to start out the year by doing everything I could, hitting-wise, fielding,” Flores said. “I got a bunch of practice in … And also me wanting to make my parents proud. That was a heavy part in it, too.”
Flores also said that not getting the spot and position he wanted as a freshman gave him extra drive to work on his defense and make sure he got that position as a senior.
With his improvement, Flores became one of the senior leaders whom he had looked up to and been mentored by only a few years before. He became the team’s most consistent hitter and recorded huge career-bests in nearly every category. Flores more than doubled his batting average from the year before, hitting an incredible .493 while having 86 plate appearances, a team-leading 36 hits and 29 RBIs (10 more than anyone else on the team).
The Bobcat’s season was one of streaks. They lost their first two games to Monte Vista, then won nine out of their next 10 games, including a four-game stretch where they outscored their opponents 65-9. A tough stretch followed where they lost four in a row, got a win, then lost their next three. IHS was able to close out the season with three straight wins thanks to two forfeits and a close 9-7 win over Centauri.
Perhaps most importantly, the Bobcats again went 7-1 in league play to clinch their fifth consecutive league title. They posted a 13-11 overall record. Winning the league as a senior meant even more to Flores because the tradition started with his cousins, the senior mentors he looked up to.
Flores was happy to have continued what his cousins started, especially with the very solid senior group that spent the past four years developing together. Flores, pitcher and run machine Gabe Archuleta, pitcher Ambrose Valdez and pitcher Stoney White Thunder were all essential parts of the fifth straight league title.
“We’ve always been friends and we grew up together,” Flores said about this year’s senior group. “All of our families are kind of tied in together, so we always had competition between us four. So it’s always great to just get together, especially on a team. It’s great to show what we can do together … and how well we bring each other up when one of us is down.”
Ignacio’s season ended in a tough 7-6 loss to Peyton in the first game of the regional playoffs. Despite the loss, Flores was happy with how the season went. He said injuries to junior William Mendoza-Lechuga and White Thunder affected the team’s performance in the middle of the season, but those injuries also gave underclassmen a chance to get more experience and show what they have.
When Flores reflects on his season and career, he feels very happy to have improved and matured as part of such a close-knit group of players. He is also very proud to be a part of what he hopes is a long-running Ignacio tradition of winning league championships.
“My older cousins kind of started that,” Flores said. “So, us seniors now, this is what we left it off with. I really hope that it continues with the younger kids that we’ve coached or helped coach … It always feels good to know that you left something. It’s always a reminder to me that I didn’t just play the sport of baseball. I also did great at it.”