Entering his 11th season as head coach, Montezuma-Cortez cross country coach Paul Koops dedicated the first few weeks of practice to building an aerobic base.<\/p>\n
Partially to work the Panthers\u2019 runners back into competition shape after time off during the summer, but also to avoid injuries.<\/p>\n
Now, following the first two weeks of practice, the Panthers will head to Monticello on Wednesday, Sept. 2 for their first meet at Lloyd\u2019s Lake.<\/p>\n
After losing two-time state qualifier Rachel Demby and four-year letterman Chandler Dee to graduation, the Panthers will lean on returning runners to lead the teams.<\/p>\n
The girls team returns last year\u2019s number two runner, sophomore Regina Schuster, and a handful of seniors in Kristine Candelaria, Rachel Zettz, Julia Damore, Judy Ha and Hannah Sanchez. Key returners for the boys team will be sophomores Sonny Boren and Reid Littlefield.<\/p>\n
Koops also expects contributions from new transfer student Emma Thiesson, as well as a healthy group of freshmen.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are a couple young freshmen coming in that I hope will help us,\u201d Koops said.<\/p>\n
Although the Panthers aren\u2019t quite ready to contend for a state title, Koops believes they will be competitive.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll look to develop the younger kids to become more competitive in the region.\u201d<\/p>\n
After the Panthers\u2019 opening race at Lloyd\u2019s Lake on Wednesday, they will travel to Delta for their regional preview on Friday, Sept. 4.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
country opens at Lloyd\u2019s Lake<\/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":[21],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-109917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","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\/109917","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=109917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109917\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109917"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=109917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}