ELOY, AZ — Nestled near the Picacho mountains, at the halfway point between Phoenix and Tucson, sits Eloy, a proud town where football under the Friday Night Lights is its beating heart.
"I haven't seen anything bring the town together like a football game," said Tommy Cortez, an Eloy native who took over the high school football program this year.
High school football back in the heyday was likened to the movie 'Hoosiers', where fans were climbing on light poles to catch a glimpse, and the entire town closed down by noon on game days.
In the present, the longtime rival Coolidge Bears are in town.
"Must win," Cortez said with a laugh. "You probably get more fans out at a Coolidge game than you would if you go to state, put it that way. It means a lot."
The fierce rivalry between Santa Cruz Valley High School and Coolidge dates back to the 1960's when the Dust Devils and Bears combined to win five straight state championships.
"Our farmers and their farmers would probably bet thousands of dollars," said Jeff Dean, whose dad moved the family to Eloy to become athletic director of the school over 60 years ago. "Not tens of thousands, but some pretty healthy bets on the Santa Cruz-Coolidge football game. Our farmers said they grew better cotton than Coolidge farmers. Football players, we were better."
To understand Eloy today, you must first understand its past.
"If you read up on the history of Eloy back in the 40s and 50s, it was pretty tough," said Dean.
"It was the last city, if you will, that had martial law," said Paul Ray Powell, a legendary athlete from Santa Cruz Valley. "People were being shot all over the place, especially on the weekends, but it was rough."
Back then, Eloy was considered 'the town tougher than Tombstone'. Another nickname it had was 'Cotton City'.
"They grew more cotton here than just about any place in the United States," said Dean.
In the early 50s, Eloy was bustling with farmers and migrant workers.
"Back then it wasn't uncommon to have 100,000 people in and around Eloy," said Ernie Hernandez, who attended Santa Cruz Valley in the mid-60s.
Kids were put to work in the fields, and if they played football, sometimes they were doing two-a-days before and after.
"We didn't need weight rooms," said Powell. "We used to pitch those watermelons and pack them from the railroad trains. But these things were huge, so you didn't have to work out, didn't need an exercise room."
Football practice wasn't so hard after pitching watermelons all summer.
Between 1965 and 1980, the Santa Cruz Valley Dust Devils won six state titles.
The discipline and work ethic learned in the fields transferred to the field and helped put Eloy on the map for something other than cotton and shootouts on Main Street.
"Nobody out-hustled us. Nobody out-muscled us," said Powell, a star of the 1965 state championship team.
Paul Ray Powell and Art Malone received football scholarships to play for Frank Kush's Sun Devils. Malone has the 4th-most single-season rushing yards in ASU history. Powell was an All-American in football and was the 1969 National Player of the Year in baseball, leading the Devils to a national championship.
They were the first of four Santa Cruz Valley Dust Devils to be inducted into the ASU football hall of fame, still the most of any single high school.
Powell went on to be a first-round draft pick by the Minnesota Twins.
Art Malone and younger brother Benny played 13 combined seasons in the NFL. Cousins Mossy and Eddie Cade spent three total years in the league, while Levi Jones played eight seasons for Cincinnati and Washington.
With an average student body size near 400, no Arizona high school has produced more NFL players per capita than Santa Cruz Valley's five.
"Isn't that something?" said Hernandez. "For a little community like Eloy to develop the talent for players to play in [the] major leagues, in the NFL. It's unbelievable that a small town could do that."
"You had to drink the water, I guess," Powell chuckled.
The water isn't what it used to be in Eloy. Businesses have dried up. Frontier street is no longer a thoroughfare between Phoenix and Tucson since the I-10 was built just a mile west.
Agriculture has taken a backseat to the biggest draw in town now: skydiving. But the pride in the community still remains.
"This is a special town, special community, special fans, special people," Hernandez said.
