<\/p>\n
The Durango Demons swept the Montezuma-Cortez tennis team on Tuesday at Parque de Vida in Cortez, 7-0.<\/p>\n
M-CHS senior Raquel Lucero dropped the first set of the No. 1 singles match to junior Maggie Hackett, 6-1. Lucero seemed to catch up with Hackett\u2019s powerful serve in the second set, and although she got as close as 4-5, Hackett took the next game to win the set, 6-4.<\/p>\n
With No. 2 singles player Skye Cole absent, M-CHS senior Kristin Pierce filled in, playing in her first singles match.<\/p>\n
Taking on Durango senior Hannah Liberman, Pierce eventually fell, 1-6, 2-6, but head coach Catherine Anliker was impressed with her performance considering the circumstances.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is her first time coming out in singles and she did really well,\u201d said Anliker. \u201cShe was a little apprehensive about playing singles because she\u2019s only played doubles, but she did really well and I was proud of how she played.\u201d<\/p>\n
Senior Laurel Chappell came the closest to giving the Lady Panthers a win.<\/p>\n
She scattered shots just inside the back of the box in the first set to jump out to a 4-1 lead over Durango senior Hailee Pritchard.<\/p>\n
Pritchard pulled within one game, trailing 5-4, before Chappell finished the set with a lob shot over Pritchard\u2019s head to win, 6-4.<\/p>\n
In the second set, it was Pritchard who jumped out to a 4-1 lead. And although Chappell dropped in two backwards over-the-head shots, Pritchard went on to win 6-1.<\/p>\n
After splitting sets, the two seniors played a tiebreaker \u2013 the first to ten points, win by two.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it puts a little more pressure on them,\u201d Anliker said of the tiebreaker. \u201cBecause instead of playing a whole third set, it puts more pressure on every point.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chappell took the first two points to lead 2-0, but Pritchard answered with three consecutive points, and would later lead 6-3.<\/p>\n
Chappell battled, but eventually fell in the tiebreaker, 10-7, in the tightest match of the day.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought she did really well,\u201d said Anliker. \u201cIt was a close match and she was fighting through a lot of the points, and there were a lot of close points.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Demons swept the doubles matches in more convincing fashion.<\/p>\n
Ellie Gervais and Emily West defeated Andria Battle and Angel Veach (6-1, 6-2), Chloe West and Jenna Engelken took down Kayla Hageman and Jennifer Sturman (6-1, 6-1) and Emma Hackett and Lily Chick finished the sweep by beating Courtney Kocourek and Alyssa Utley (6-1, 6-0).<\/p>\n
Missing three team members, the Lady Panthers were forced to forfeit the final doubles match.<\/p>\n
Anliker said that the forfeit was unfortunate, but noted that she expects to have a full roster for the Lady Panthers\u2019 next matches on Friday.<\/p>\n
M-CHS (2-4, 1-4 4A\/5A Southwestern League), will take on Glenwood Springs (2-2, 1-1 4A Region 8 League) and Grand Junction (5-3, 1-0 4A\/5A Southwestern League) on Friday at Canyon View Park in Grand Junction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Chappell battles in tiebreaker, Kristin Pierce plays well in first singles match<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":105684,"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-105683","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\/105683","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=105683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105683\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/105684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105683"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=105683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}