El Paso Matters – ‘The glue that holds Ysleta together’: At Lower Valley high school, generations still come home to Hutchins Stadium

Joe Martinez was a junior wide receiver at Ysleta High School in 1997 when the football team last claimed a district championship, sharing the title that year with Riverside High School.

Twenty-eight years passed before the Indians won another. This time, Martinez was their head coach.

Ysleta defeated Riverside 61-50 at Hutchins Stadium last October to clinch the District 1-4A championship, completing a 9-0 start and giving Martinez his first district title in a decade as the school’s coach. 

Now, Ysleta begins a new season with a chance to defend that title amid another milestone: a school year marking 100 years since it became an accredited four-year high school.

But until this summer, there was uncertainty over whether the Indians would get to defend their championship at home.

Drainage problems beneath the decade-old artificial turf at Hutchins Stadium had warped portions of the playing surface, prompting safety concerns and a $1.8 million replacement and remediation project. District officials initially expected the work to keep Ysleta away from Hutchins for at least a portion of the 2026 football season.

Instead, the project moved ahead of schedule. Ysleta Independent School District officials said the stadium will be ready when the Indians play their first home game Friday, Sept. 4, against Burges High School.

“The kids, they deserve it,” Martinez said. “You know, they work really hard and the community gets to be part of it. We’re ready to go.”

The work at Hutchins is part of a districtwide effort to maintain athletic facilities.

YISD budgeted $3.1 million this summer to replace turf at its six other high school football fields. The existing fields date to another districtwide investment a decade ago, when YISD installed artificial turf at all seven of its high school stadiums as part of a $430.5 million bond program approved by voters in 2015. Turf and lighting projects across the district cost more than $14 million at the time.

Those projects are among nearly $72 million in deferred-maintenance needs YISD identified this summer, ranging from roofs and air-conditioning systems to buses and athletic facilities. In June, trustees authorized the district to pay up to $65 million for eligible deferred-maintenance projects with tax notes that will be repaid through future revenues over 10 to 15 years.

The investments come as YISD contends with declining enrollment and a financial crisis  — pressures that require district leaders to balance costs against the needs of students.

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At Ysleta High, that balancing act carries particular significance.

Its historic Trost-designed campus dates to 1929. Hutchins has stood at its center since 1939, with subsequent generations of campus buildings growing around the stadium.

And generations of families have grown around the school.

Martinez is one of them. He grew up in the surrounding community, attended Ysleta, played football there and eventually returned to coach. Many of his players come from the same neighborhoods.

That’s why the prospect of spending a portion of this season away from Hutchins bothered Martinez more than he initially let his players know.

“In private, I was a little upset, not for myself, but just more for them, because this means a lot to them to play on this field,” Martinez said.

Hutchins at heart of Ysleta

Hutchins Stadium has occupied the center of Ysleta High School for nearly as long as the campus itself.

The first section of the $50,000 stadium opened Sept. 15, 1939, in time for Ysleta’s season opener against Ranger High School, a campus located in Eastland County about 80 miles west of Fort Worth. The completed stadium was dedicated that November and named for C.A. Hutchins, then president of the Ysleta school board and one of the school’s prominent supporters. The stadium and an accompanying school addition cost $100,000.

Its design made the stadium part of the school in more than a figurative sense. Concrete seating covered spaces used for athletic offices, vocational agriculture and shop classes, band activities and ROTC storage. As Ysleta High expanded in the decades that followed, new buildings increasingly surrounded the field.

Hutchins also became the setting for one of the most notable wins in El Paso high school football history. In the first round of the 1960 playoffs, Ysleta upset heavily favored Odessa Permian 31-21, defeating a program that would later gain national fame through the book and film “Friday Night Lights.” Junior John Folmer starred at linebacker for Ysleta, including two fumble recoveries that helped preserve the win.

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For more than five decades, Ysleta remained the only El Paso County team to have beaten Permian. Montwood High School finally joined the Indians in 2012 with an early-season 34-30 victory over the Panthers, then beat Permian again in Odessa the following year. El Dorado High School also defeated Permian in the first round of the state playoffs in 2012.

Today, Principal Amelia Garcia describes Hutchins as a centerpiece of the campus.

“What’s really, really special and important is it’s one of the only stadiums that is nestled within the campus,” Garcia said. “It’s kind of a centerpiece to the school.”

The arrangement has helped make Hutchins a gathering place for people whose connection to Ysleta extends well beyond their years as students.

Garcia noticed it when she attended her first football game after coming to Ysleta. Alumni gravitated toward their traditional section of the stadium, she said, and continued showing up regardless of whether they had children attending the school.

“Seeing the alumni gravitate to that area on Friday nights and just the outpouring of support that they have, you know, whether they have students here or not, they’re always here,” said Garcia, a Riverside High School graduate. “It’s the glue that holds Ysleta High School together.”

Martin Segovia, YISD’s athletic director, said athletic events are among the places where parents, alumni and other residents most visibly encounter their neighborhood schools.

“We, in athletics, are the front porch of education,” Segovia said. “This is where people come. They come to gyms, they come to stadiums. They can’t just come to a classroom. But they work simultaneously. They work well together. So, when we’re doing well, academics do well.”

Growth alongside an older community

Ysleta High School’s roots extend beyond the centennial it is preparing to celebrate.

The community surrounding it is older still. Ysleta traces its history to the Tigua people who arrived in the El Paso area following the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. The settlement developed around the Ysleta Mission and remained for generations a distinct agricultural community in the Lower Valley.

In 1926, Ysleta High received state accreditation as a four-year high school. Before that, the school offered three years of high school coursework; adding a fourth year meant students from the Ysleta community no longer had to travel to El Paso to complete their education.

The community changed, too. Ysleta became part of El Paso in 1955 after an annexation opposed by local voters, while the Ysleta Independent School District retained its separate identity.

Today, the school continues to maintain ties with Ysleta del Sur Pueblo, and reminders of its own history remain throughout the campus, from the original building to Heritage Hall and traditions passed among generations of students.

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Henry Reyna, a 1995 Ysleta graduate and past president of the Ysleta High School Alumni Association, said those traditions have taken different forms across generations. Through the alumni association’s efforts on social media, he has encountered graduates whose years at Ysleta stretch back to the 1950s and ’60s.

“We’ve kept people interested in Ysleta and now people share their stories, their experiences,” Reyna said. “It’s connected a lot of people with people that they lost contact with, but it’s also connected people with other people that they’ve never met. All of a sudden, that little portion, it opens doors for them. 

“Once you talk to people from different generations, it’s a different story.”

A new generation carries Ysleta’s expectations

For Ysleta’s players, the school’s history is accompanied by a more immediate expectation.

They are the defending district champions.

The Indians finished the 2025 regular season 10-0, ending a 28-year wait for a district championship before their season ended in the playoffs. Much of that team returns this fall, including senior quarterback Rodrigo Martinez and senior wide receiver AJ Guzman.

For Guzman, staying at Ysleta was a choice.

By middle school, he said, he knew students interested in athletics could begin considering where they wanted to play in high school. But after getting to know Ysleta coach Joe Martinez and playing alongside friends who also planned to attend Ysleta, Guzman had little interest in going elsewhere.

“I knew meeting him, meeting all my buddies, knowing from Martinez, I knew I was set to stay here. This was my journey, this was where I was gonna stay my destiny,” Guzman said.

Quarterback Rodrigo Martinez, who is not related to his head coach, lives about a two-minute drive from campus. He recalled arriving at summer workouts before seventh grade having little experience playing organized football and feeling intimidated by the older players around him.

“Coach Martinez is one of the best people in my life. He’s so important to me because I was scared to come out here for summer workouts,” he said. “And he was the first one to come up to me and tell me, ‘Don’t be scared. Just come out here and work.’ And ever since then, he’s always believed in me.”

The senior said he now embraces being the player teammates turn to when they need direction.

“I mean, it’s cool. Being that leader that the team needs, people need help and I’m there to help them. That’s what I really like about this, is the leadership, for sure,” he said.

For Joe Martinez, the challenge now is taking a group that made history last season and convincing it that the accomplishment does not guarantee anything this fall.

“If we just keep getting better bit by bit every single day, every single week, every single game, it’ll prepare us for anything,” he said. “These guys can play with anybody. When they play to their potential, they’re the best team in the city. There’s no doubt that we can run the table again.”

The next 100 years

For all the attention the centennial will bring to Ysleta High’s past, Garcia said she wants the anniversary to point forward, too.

The school has adopted “A Century of Excellence, A Future Without Limits” as its centennial theme.

“We know education doesn’t get any easier,” Garcia said. “It’s challenging for all, but the people that reside within this building educating students are in it for the right reasons. They’ve got the heart for it, and they’re here to leave that legacy, whether it’s because their children are coming to school here, whether they want future family members to come here or simply just because they are so invested in the success of this school in the Lower Valley.”

The more immediate future will arrive on a Friday night when the Indians return to a field where generations of students have played, performed and gathered since 1939.

“I tell them, ‘Look, guys, it’s not about you. You’re part of something greater than yourself. Look at the stands. Look who’s here. They don’t even know who you are, but they’re cheering for you,’ you know?” Martinez said. “I think that inspires them to play hard.”

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