After opening pool play on Nov. 8 with a victory over Kit Carson (25-14, 25-18, 25-18), the Bulldogs returned to action on Nov. 9 against Vail Christian.<\/p>\n
Playing at the Denver Coliseum in front of energetic Dove Creek fans, the Bulldogs dominated from start to finish, winning 25-4, 25-11, 25-13.<\/p>\n
Opening the first set with a bang, the Bulldogs jumped ahead 7-0 after several Vail Christian hitting errors. Later in the set, the Bulldogs moved ahead 15-3 on an ace by senior Shelbie Knuckles, before closing things out 25-4 after a Vail Christian spike sailed long.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey came out strong and played with a lot of intensity,\u201d Bulldogs head coach Scott Knuckles said of his team\u2019s play in the first set. \u201cVail Christian got a set off us at Districts, so it was nice to close things out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Continuing their dominant play in the second set, the Bulldogs jumped ahead early, leading 8-1 much to the despair of shell-shocked Vail Christian.<\/p>\n
Although Vail Christian would make a brief run to cut the score to 13-9, the Bulldogs pulled away, wrapping up the first set 25-11 on an ace by Corissa Guynes.<\/p>\n
Intent on closing things out in the third set, the Bulldogs pulled ahead 12-2 on a kill by Shelbie Knuckles before closing out the set 25-13 with a perfectly placed spike that dropped in the back left corner of the court.<\/p>\n
With the victory, the Bulldogs finished first in their pool, thereby advancing to the state semifinals, which will begin this afternoon. A semifinal opponent has yet to be determined.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a lot of confidence going into the next match,\u201d said Scott Knuckles. \u201cHopefully that will help us a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n
Live updates of this afternoon\u2019s action will be available on twitter @cortezjournal and @imac_34. Updates will also appear on the Cortez Journal\u2019s Facebook page.<\/p>\n
A video of the Bulldogs\u2019 victory will be available at www.cortezjournal.com.<\/p>\n
Follow Dove Creek\u2019s run at a state title on Twitter at @cortezjournal and @imac_34<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
opening pool play on Nov. 8 with a victory over Kit Carson (25-14, 25-18, 25-18), the Bulldogs returned to action on Nov. 9 against Vail Christian. Playing at the Denver Coliseum in front of energetic Dove Creek fans, the Bulldogs dominated from start to finish, winning 25-4, 25-11, 25-13. Opening the first set with […]<\/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":[5736,5735],"tags":[386,155,861],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-123237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-breaking-news","tag-education","tag-high-schools"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123237","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=123237"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123237\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123237"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=123237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}