<\/p>\n
After thumping Cotopaxi and Nucla in the Class 1A District 1 Tournament last weekend, the Dove Creek Bulldogs are heading back to the state tournament.<\/p>\n
A home run off the bat of senior Jordan Ernst got the Bulldogs (8-13, 3-6 San Juan Basin League) going in the first inning against Cotopaxi (12-3, 5-1 San Luis Valley).<\/p>\n
And from there, the offense found a groove and the Bulldogs finished with 17 hits and 18 runs in an 18-3 thrashing.<\/p>\n
Heading into the district championship game, Dove Creek was 0-3 against Nucla (10-11, 5-1 San Juan Basin League) on the season.<\/p>\n
But the Bulldogs came through when it counted.<\/p>\n
Scott Gatlin and Ernst each homered in the contest, Colin Hobbs finished 3-for-4 with three runs and four RBIs and Dove Creek jumped out to a 5-0 advantage after the first inning and cruised to 14-4 victory.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we were a little more familiar with the pitchers,\u201d head coach Curtis Garver said about facing Nucla for the fourth time this season.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe just kept our mentality throughout that first game to keep attacking,\u201d he continued. \u201cAnd in that first inning we got out to a 5-0 lead and it just seemed like Nucla\u2019s heads were dropped and they couldn\u2019t come back.\u201d<\/p>\n
Making it even more difficult for the Mustangs to get any sort of an offensive spark was Ernst, who pitched 5 2\/3 and finished with 15 strikeouts and just one walk.<\/p>\n
\u201cA couple of them were able to get a hold of him,\u201d Garver said of Ernst\u2019s outing. \u201cBut he had really good control and his ball was moving so much that they just had trouble with it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now, the Bulldogs find themselves back in the state tournament. And they\u2019ll start things off against the familiar Granada Bobcats (10-2, 5-0 Arkansas Valley).<\/p>\n
The Bulldogs took down the Bobcats in last year\u2019s championship game, 8-5.<\/p>\n
But this year, the two will meet in the opening round of the state tournament, this Saturday, at All-City Field in Denver at 10 a.m.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bulldogs return to the state tournament and open against familiar foe<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":105189,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5770],"tags":[80],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-105188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-high-school-sports","tag-dove-creek"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105188","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=105188"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105188\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/105189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105188"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=105188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}