Marques Barraza played on the Tularosa football team for two seasons and was the starting running back his senior year. He drowned in Abiquiú Lake. Photo from Facebook
Marques Barraza, a Santa Fe teenager whose body was recovered Wednesday from Abiquiú Lake, was remembered as a hardworking, dedicated team player, his high school football coach said Thursday.
“Marques was, you know, that kid who had a smile on his face all the time,” said Richard Grace of Tularosa High School.
The search for Barraza, 19, began Tuesday afternoon after a 911 call of a reported drowning, according to KOB-TV.
Barraza was swimming with friends from a small island in the lake back to the shoreline when the drowning occurred, said Rio Arriba County Sheriff’s Capt. Lorenzo Aguilar, a department spokesman.
Aguilar said it was a long distance between the island and the shoreline, “enough for him to be exhausted and not be able to make it back.”
Barraza’s friends tried to help him, Aguilar said, but were unable to hold onto him.
The sheriff’s office and the Army Corps of Engineers, which manages the reservoir, searched for Barraza until midnight but were unable to find him, Aguilar said.
The next morning, the New Mexico State Police dive team assisted in the search and recovered his body.
John Mueller, the Abiquiú Lake operations project manager, said Barraza and his friends were swimming in the Cañones Cove area, on the south side of the reservoir.
The area is dangerous, Mueller said, and popular for cliff jumping.
Rangers can only patrol the area by boat, Mueller said, because the shoreline is on private property that can only be reached by hiking down from N.M. 96.
The last drowning occurred at the lake in 2013, Mueller said, and another drowning in the same area where Barraza was swimming occurred in the 1990s.
A small memorial for Barraza was held Wednesday night at the Tularosa High School football field, Grace said.
Barraza transferred from schooling in Santa Fe to Tularosa High for his junior year, Grace said, but wasn’t able to play despite being good enough to be on the team.
“He never complained one bit,” Grace said. “He did what we asked of him, and when he had his opportunity, he took advantage of it.”
Barraza went on to be the team’s starting running back his senior year.
“It was a pleasure,” Grace said. “He’s that kind of player that you get once in a lifetime. He worked really hard in everything you asked of him.”