<\/p>\n
The Montezuma-Cortez Lady Panthers tennis team is back in Grand Junction this weekend.<\/p>\n
The Lady Panthers (2-7, 1-7 4A\/5A Southwestern League) wrapped up their regular season last week and will compete in the Class 4A Region 8 tournament at Canyonview Courts in Grand Junction on Friday and Saturday.<\/p>\n
M-CHS comes into the regional on a four-match losing streak after being swept 7-0 by Durango, Grand Junction Central and Grand Junction, and falling to Montrose 6-1.<\/p>\n
But in three of the four losses, the Panthers were down 2-0 to start because they were short players and forced to forfeit.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve just had inconsistency with people out and people missing matches for various reasons,\u201d said head coach Catherine Anliker. \u201cSo that\u2019s frustrating.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were a struggle because we went into them without having the number two singles or number four doubles,\u201d Anliker said of recent losses. \u201cWe were already down by two in the overall score, and it\u2019s kind of disheartening to go into a match like that. But they were really good teams that we played, so it was good practice and experience.\u201d<\/p>\n
Anliker also focused on the positives and mentioned the growth she\u2019s seen as the season has played out, specifically noting the improvements made by singles players Raquel Lucero and Laurel Chappell \u2013 both of whom are 4-5 on the season in singles matches.<\/p>\n
The Panthers will go into Friday\u2019s regional shorthanded once again, but their team score won\u2019t determine whether or not singles players or doubles teams advance to the state tournament, so Anliker isn\u2019t concerned.<\/p>\n
Instead, she hopes the tournament will be noteworthy for seniors like Lucero, Chappell, Ashley Moore, Kayla Hageman, Kristin Pierce and Jennifer Sturman \u2013 and enlightening for underclassmen like Andria Battle, Angel Veach and Alyssa Utley.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are a lot of seniors on the team and this is their last year,\u201d she said. \u201cSo I just want it to be a memorable time and a fun time, and for it to be a learning experience for the underclassmen \u2013 and just do our best.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Panthers fight for state tournament spots in Grand Junction<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":105287,"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-105286","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\/105286","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=105286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105286\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/105287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105286"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=105286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}