{"id":105173,"date":"2016-05-11T21:07:38","date_gmt":"2016-05-12T03:07:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/m-chs-soccer-season-ends-in-tie\/"},"modified":"2016-05-11T21:07:38","modified_gmt":"2016-05-12T03:07:38","slug":"m-chs-soccer-season-ends-in-tie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/m-chs-soccer-season-ends-in-tie\/","title":{"rendered":"M-CHS soccer season ends in tie"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Montezuma-Cortez
Montezuma-Cortez senior Weslie Kirks performs a flip throw in the Panthers\u2019 final game against Pagosa Springs last Thursday.<\/span>Terri House\/The Pagosa Springs SUN<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The Montezuma-Cortez soccer team wrapped up its 2016 season with a 0-0 tie at Pagosa Springs last Thursday.<\/p>\n

The Panthers (3-8-2, 1-4-1 4A\/5A Southwestern League) \u2013 who have battled injuries to key players all season \u2013 turned to their youngsters in their final contest, and their defense and goalkeeper Stevee Brenner kept Pagosa\u2019s 15 shots from entering the net to end in a stalemate.<\/p>\n

\u201cI played a lot of girls that haven\u2019t seen a lot of time this season,\u201d M-CHS head coach Nate Ross said. \u201cA lot of freshman played in that game, and basically I just wanted us to go and have fun for that last game.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pagosa\u2019s defense answered in turn, and keeper Diana Scott made eight saves to blank the Panthers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a lot of shots on goal and a couple off the posts,\u201d said Ross. \u201cBut their goalkeeper made quite a few good saves.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Panthers hope to tally more wins in the coming seasons, playing against schools that have similar enrollment numbers. Playing in the 4A\/5A Southwestern League, M-CHS was taking on schools with enrollment numbers twice, and sometimes nearly three times as high.<\/p>\n

But the Panthers were still competitive against the stringent competition.<\/p>\n

With a 2014-2016 enrollment of 629, M-CHS beat Grand Junction High School (enrollment: 1,713) 2-0 for their only league win, and later tied the Tigers 1-1 in their second contest \u2013 games that Ross pointed to as highlights of the season.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs far as playing some of our best soccer and showing the best fight and heart in our season, a lot of it was in those two games,\u201d he said. \u201cAnother game that stands out was the Fruita game at home when we were defensive-minded.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe focused purely on shutting Fruita down,\u201d he continued. \u201cAnd they\u2019re the top team in our league, and we were frustrating them to the point where they couldn\u2019t trap a ball and they couldn\u2019t connect passes because we were so tight on defense.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ross and the Panthers certainly hoped to finish out the season with a win. But considering the circumstances, the head coach was content to get his younger players some run and end with a tie.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was one of those games where you wish you could\u2019ve come out with a win, but my younger girls got some time to get in there and play against a 3A team that will be in our league next year.\u201d<\/p>\n

Looking forward, Ross is optimistic about the Panthers\u2019 move to Class 3A next season and joining the league with Pagosa. The Pirates (10-4-1, 10-2 3A Region 5), finished with the most wins in the conference, but M-CHS beat them 2-0 in their first meeting before tying last week.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re the top team in the league we\u2019ll be in next year,\u201d said Ross. \u201cAnd looking at how we played against them for our last game, we were kind of limping through that game and we were still dominating a lot of the play.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were still getting a lot of good looks and shots on goal,\u201d he continued. \u201cSo as far as looking to the future, we tied the top team in the league.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Panthers get a taste of next year\u2019s league against Pagosa Springs<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":105174,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5770],"tags":[21],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-105173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-high-school-sports","tag-cortez"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105173\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/105174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105173"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=105173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}