In the fall of 2022, Sacramento State's football team completed the first undefeated regular season in program history, thirteen games without a loss. Ivan Garza started every one of them on the offensive line. Garza, a 25-year-old native of Delano, California, died in his hometown on July 8, 2026.

He grew up in Delano, in California's Central Valley, and starred on the line at Robert F. Kennedy High School, where he was named first-team all-state in the small school ranks and first-team all-South Sequoia League as a senior, according to CBS Sacramento. He graduated from Kennedy in 2019 and enrolled at Sacramento State that fall.

Garza redshirted his first season, and the Big Sky Conference then canceled its entire 2020 schedule because of the COVID-19 pandemic, pushing his college debut back another year. He finally took the field in 2021, playing in all 12 games as the Hornets won their first Big Sky Conference championship. He started all 13 games the next season, when Sacramento State repeated as champion and finished its regular season undefeated for the first time, and he started all 13 again in 2023, his final year, earning honorable mention all-Big Sky recognition, according to Yahoo Sports. In all, he played in 38 games for the Hornets.

One of the teammates he blocked for during those championship seasons was running back Cam Skattebo, who later reached the NFL with the New York Giants. After news of Garza's death spread, Skattebo posted a photo of him to Instagram Stories with the message: "R.I.P brutha garz ❤️wasnt your time at all 😔"

Sacramento State Football said in a statement, "We give our deepest condolences to Ivan's friends and family. He will be remembered as a wonderful teammate, player, and Hornet," according to Bakersfield Now.

Garza's name is attached to two Big Sky championship seasons and to the only undefeated regular season Sacramento State football has produced, a run built one snap at a time from the interior of an offensive line he anchored for three straight years, starting 36 of his 38 career games. He wore number 52 at six foot five and 295 pounds, the frame of a lineman built for the long seasons rather than the highlight reel. The teammates he protected, including one now playing on Sundays in the NFL, played their careers behind the line he helped build. Delano, the Central Valley town that raised him, was the place he called home until the end.