Farmington's Mohawk-rocking, trophy-touting, private school kryptonite of a team busted the mold Saturday.
Their cosmetic work, revealed before the Piedra Vista game, isn't new.
Their 4A state championship is.
Soccer is a decidedly private sport in the United States. Club teams often would dominate high school state champions.
It's a world game, and foreign influence is a commodity, one that flocks to money.
American football coaches are a penny for two dozen, while the difference between the best and worst high school soccer coaches mimics the budget chasm between a Hollywood blockbuster and a film-festival dud.
The Land of Enchantment's biggest city monopolized 4A soccer within that framework.
St. Pius and Albuquerque Academy faced each other in nine of the past 12 state championships, some under the 1A-3A umbrella.
Check the NMAA's Web site, scroll for the last time St. Pius didn't appear in the state finals and your finger may swell. You'll be clicking more often than Phil Ivey during a multi-table online poker session.
I'll save you the time. It's been 17 years.
The blue-collar school on aptly-named 2200 Sunset Avenue ended Albuquerque's reign with some help of their cross-town rivals.
Pete Rankin, the man leading the charge, has developed one of Farmington's proudest sports traditions in the shadow of Don Lorett's state championship baseball teams and Kevin Holman's area vice grip in boys' basketball.
Don't confuse the Bleached Boys with the musical group with two fewer letters, but the Scorpions are feeling some "Good Vibrations" today.
They've learned a bit about celebrations since Riley McGovern's awkward, impromptu roll in the grass after a late goal against PV preserved the district championship.
Call it fate. Call it luck.
Call it irrelevant at your own peril.
That goal, which led to a bloody, come-from-behind double-overtime win, relegated the Panthers to a No. 8 seed and hid FHS from their nemesis in the 2006 state championship game, St. Pius.
PV shocked and awed, banishing the Sartans to spectatorship for the first time since 1992. FHS danced to the obligatory blue trophy.
The signature celebration: Nico Lewis stalking the sideline, hushing the Los Alamos crowd after his second-half goal added a few exclamation points to the 3-0 win.
The Hilltoppers' faithful had hounded Lewis after he picked up a yellow card.
It showcased the controlled edge Rankin's bunch displayed all season.
This wasn't a team that would go Elizabeth Lambert on you, but they weren't about to lay on the pitch if someone else did.
A gash here or collision there did not deter them. A silent rage, not so much angry as fierce, sat on the exercise bike behind the curtain in a controlled pedal, powering the team's psyche.
The most impressive asset of this unit, however, mirrors the U.S. national team that busted their own block out of history's wall with a win over No. 1 Spain this summer.
Their athleticism.
Not that the Scorps aren't polished. They've got players with club team ties of their own, much like the U.S. has placed players in European leagues.
Like a Fourth of July fireworks show, their collective on-ball ability dazzled.
To those of us that aren't aficionados, the dribbling and passing of Farmington's athletes, the Klepacs, Lewis, Thaddeus Carter and Nathan Rodgers among them, made an impression two or three times a game.
Not quite like the bleach.
"If we take state, I think they'll stay around," McGovern said of the team's hairdos.
They did.
It won't matter. Farmington's next crop of players don't have to make the state finals, as McGovern's class did twice. They don't have to make like Beckham in the hands of Cosmo-worshiping teenage girls.
The Bleached Boys could retire and still be remembered.
This team's image is history, now and forever.
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