The exuberant hooting and hollering coming from the Las Vegas Robertson locker room after Saturday's dominant 26-0 win over St. Michael's was as much about a program announcing its return to state prominence as it was about a group of kids turning the page on the past.

The Cardinals dominated every facet of Saturday's game — gaining 217 yards of offense while holding the Horsemen to minus-14 total yards, gaining 12 first downs while allowing two, shutting out the Horsemen for the first time in 54 games and all but securing the District 2AAA runner-up spot.

"We were hoping to come out and squeeze out a victory," said Robertson junior quarterback/linebacker Daniel Martinez, who rushed for 124 yards, a touchdown and was one of a plethora of Cardinals defenders putting constant pressure on Horsemen quarterbacks.

"But we weren't expecting anything like this. This shocked us a little, and I could definitely see the shock in their eyes on the field as it was happening."

That shock wasn't reserved for the players.

"I'm embarrassed," said St. Michael's head coach Joey Fernandez. "I didn't have my team ready to play. I'm disappointed because I know that we can play a lot better. I'm angry just because we didn't do what was taught. We (prepared for) everything that they did and we didn't do what we taught them to do this week."

After Luis Lopez returned the opening kick 47 yards to the St. Michael's 43-yard line, the Cardinals capped an eight-play drive with a 4-yard Dalan Abreu touchdown run and a 6-0 lead.

Abreu added a second touchdown run in the second quarter for a 13-0 halftime lead.

The intermission didn't change the tone of the game. In fact, the Cardinals' high-pressure defense only got better.

Robertson (6-3 overall, 2-1 District 2AAA) sacked St. Michael's quarterbacks six times for minus-47 yards and allowed the highly-regarded Horsemen rushing attack to minus-37 yards.

"Hopefully, we'll learn from this and, hopefully, we'll come together as a team because right now, we're not a team," said Fernandez, whose team falls to 6-3 overall, 1-2 in district.

The lack of cohesion on the St. Michael's sideline was a stark contrast to the culmination of more than a year's worth of rebuilding a sense of team on the Robertson sideline.

The Cardinals not only catapulted to a potential top-four seeding in the Class AAA state playoffs, and a first-round tournament bye, they took another stride toward forgetting its recent past.

The first memory Saturday's win helped put in the rearview mirror was one put right in their face as they walked to and from Brother Abdon Field.

Hanging in the office window of Fernandez, an office window only a few feet from the entrance to the visitor's locker room, was a poster showing the 2007 AAA state football tournament bracket. The poster showed the 27-6
St. Michael's championship win over the Cardinals.

The second memory Saturday's win helped the Robertson football team distance itself from was far more painful.

"After what these guys have been through and what we went through last year," said Robertson head coach Richard Martinez, "I'm hoping that with this, we can finally turn the page and move on with all our lives in Las Vegas and let this be it."

Since the 2007 state title loss to St. Michael's, the Robertson football team feels it has been dragged through the mud in the aftermath of a 2008 summer hazing incident that rocked the foundation of what had been one of the state's top AAA programs.

Coach Martinez was put in place to run the program less than a week before the 2008 season and the team struggled to a 2-9 record. But he never stopped rebuilding and never let the kids get caught up in what those on the outside of the program were saying.

"We just worked hard, every day we worked hard," coach Martinez said. "They played like men today. They didn't come down here afraid of getting beat. That's a huge step forward and I hope some people around the state start taking notice of just how far these kids have come since our 0-2 start, and since last year."

After Saturday, the Robertson football team is hard to ignore.

Contact Geoff Grammer at 986-3060 or ggrammer@sfnewmexican.com. Read his blog at grammerschoolblog.com.