This time last year, the Dove Creek Bulldogs were entering the district tournament with an 8-11 record.<\/p>\n
Two weeks later, they were state champions.<\/p>\n
There are multiple similarities between last year\u2019s team and the current squad, so Dove Creek is hoping to pull from the experience it gained during last season\u2019s state championship run.<\/p>\n
The Bulldogs head into the 2016 Class 1A District 1 Tournament on Friday with a 6-13 record, which leads head coach Curtis Garver to believe that his team needs to win the district title in order to secure a spot in the state tournament bracket.<\/p>\n
But that doesn\u2019t necessarily mean they feel tension.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we were kind of feeling too much pressure early in the season,\u201d said Garver. \u201cBut I think now they\u2019re realizing it really doesn\u2019t matter. It\u2019s just whatever we can put together at the end of the season will either make or break us.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Bulldogs (6-13, 3-6 1A District 1) open against Cotopaxi (12-2, 5-1 1A District 1) on Friday at 12:30 p.m. at Ignacio.<\/p>\n
Garver said that they don\u2019t really know much about the Pirates, but that their records can be misleading.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have probably one of the toughest schedules in the state, so our record can be deceiving,\u201d he said. \u201cThe only 1A team that we play is Nucla.\u201d<\/p>\n
And if both teams win their district opener, Dove Creek would see Nucla in the district championship for the second consecutive season.<\/p>\n
Last year, the Bulldogs were 1-3 against the Mustangs. But after falling to Nucla in the district championship and still getting into the state tournament, Dove Creek won three straight to win the championship.<\/p>\n
The Bulldogs are 0-3 against the Mustangs this season, but as they learned last season \u2013 anything is possible.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s one of those things, that anything can happen in the district tournament,\u201d Garver said. \u201cAnd our boys know that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
draws confidence from last year\u2019s state championship run<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"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-105288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","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\/105288","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=105288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105288\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105288"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=105288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}