The Final Whistle: After 51 years, Saturday championship will be last for Cleveland's Kilmer

RIO RANCHO — “Practicing on Thanksgiving Day, it never gets old, that's for sure.”

Cleveland defensive coordinator and assistant coach Eddie Kilmer said this when asked about the possibility of ending his 51-year career with a state championship, along with the Storm's tradition of practicing on the holiday when they reach the title game.

News came out earlier this week that Kilmer will hang up the whistle and headset once the season concludes.

Fifty-one years, several different schools and countless rosters. That is a lot of football, perhaps why Kilmer is throwing in the towel?

Not quite.

“It's a family deal. I have six grandkids who live in Texas, and I need to be closer to them,” Kilmer said. “That's the only thing; I still have the energy.’

That energy has taken Kilmer all over New Mexico and the Southwest for his coaching career, making stops at Clovis High and Alamogordo High on top of several Texas high schools.

“I've always had a big admiration for the kind of kid that wants to go do what we ask them to do. We're pretty hard on them, and we have high expectations,” Kilmer said. “I think that's probably my number-one memory, all of the great kids that I had the opportunity to coach, along with all the friendships I've made with coaches across two states.”

Kilmer has been at the forefront of seeing the changes in high school football over the years, specifically when in-season weightlifting went from taboo to necessity.

“When I was at Clovis, we were the first team in the state to lift weights during the season,” Kilmer said. "Most people would just stop lifting weights after the summer, but it just made us get better and better. While everybody else was slacking off, we were still working.”

But the more things change, the more they stay the same.

“To be 100% honest, it's still whoever blocks the best and tackles the best has a chance to win the game,” Kilmer said. “That's the bottom line. But it is more wide open. Years ago, back in the day, it was tighter; whoever was the biggest and strongest was probably going to win.”

Luckily for Kilmer, his in-season weights formula fit perfectly when he made the move to Cleveland in 2011, with former head coach Kirk Potter sharing a similar philosophy.

“Believe it or not, Coach Potter had them lift on Fridays; on game days, they'd come in at 7:30 in the morning and get a weight workout in,” Kilmer said. “That's how much he believed in the weights. It's just a mindset. And the kids are 100% honest. You get exactly what you expect from them. If you expect them to work hard and do what's right, they will. Kids are kids. They're good.”

Kilmer will be expecting one last week of hard work from the 2025 Storm, practicing on Turkey Day two days before the big championship matchup with Las Cruces.

His defense is coming off a six-turnover day against Hobbs and a 42-0 shutout over Volcano Vista in this playoff run, with a possible big performance against the Bulldawgs being the cherry on top of an illustrious career.

“Every team is different. It doesn't matter how many people return to the team from last year. Each team has its own identity, its own signature, its own things they're good at.” Kilmer said. “As a coach, you have to figure out what those things are. You can't just do what you always do, because that's the way you always did it. You have to figure out what these kids can do. It takes us a little while sometimes to figure that out, but once you do, and you can let them just play, you've got an advantage over other people.”