{"id":16066,"date":"2025-10-19T17:26:19","date_gmt":"2025-10-19T17:26:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/football-roundup-mancos-cortez-fall-in-first-place-battles\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T03:53:29","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T03:53:29","slug":"football-roundup-mancos-cortez-fall-in-first-place-battles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/football-roundup-mancos-cortez-fall-in-first-place-battles\/","title":{"rendered":"Football roundup: Mancos, Cortez fall in first-place battles"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Mancos
Mancos senior Jonah Ritter looks to catch a pass in the end zone against the coverage of Sanford\u2019s Colton Reynolds in a contest against the Mustangs at Bluejay Field. Erika Alvero\/Special to The Journal<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

MANCOS \u2013 Mancos and Montezuma-Cortez entered Friday night with a chance to stay atop their respective leagues. However, in contests against Alamosa and Sanford, both teams fell short against high-powered offenses.<\/p>\n

Sanford 42, Mancos 14<\/div>\n

The Bluejays and visiting Mustangs entered the night\u2019s contest ranked No. 5 and No. 6 in the classification, adding playoff seeding implications to the league title chase.<\/p>\n

Sanford (6-1, 3-0 Mountain League) quickly took the wind out of the Bluejays\u2019 sails on Senior Night, scoring on each of their first four possessions and holding Mancos without a first down until the scoreboard read 28-0. Three one-yard touchdowns capped efficient Mustang drives, including two from senior quarterback Trason Gartrell.<\/p>\n

In a deep hole, Mancos (5-2, 2-1 Mountain League) showed signs of life as junior quarterback Michael Resner broke loose on a long run to set up a red-zone opportunity. Several plays later, senior Jonah Ritter submarined behind his line into the end zone from four yards out to cut the margin to 28-8.<\/p>\n

\"Mancos
Mancos senior Jonah Ritter breaks free around the Sanford defense in a contest against the Mustangs at Bluejay Field. Erika Alvero\/Special to The Journal<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Mancos
Mancos junior Michael Resner looks to elude Sanford defenders in a contest against the Mustangs at Bluejay Field. Erika Alvero\/Special to The Journal<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Sanford scored on its first drive of the second half with a 69-yard burst from Gartrell.<\/p>\n

Mancos responded early in the fourth quarter on a fourth-down heave from Resner to classmate James Potts, making it 35-14. Sanford sealed the win with time-consuming drives in the closing minutes.<\/p>\n

Mancos will look to bounce back and maintain a top-eight seed, which would ensure its five seniors at least one more home game. The Bluejays travel to Norwood (5-2, 2-1 Mountain League) on Thursday, Oct. 23, for another top-10 clash against the Mavericks.<\/p>\n

Alamosa 40, M-CHS 0<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Mean Moose defense proved too tough for the Panthers (4-3, 2-1 2A Intermountain League), holding M-CHS to fewer than 25 yards of total offense in their trip to the San Luis Valley.<\/p>\n

Alamosa (5-2, 3-0 2A IML) scored on its final four possessions of the first half to build a 26-0 lead and never looked back, remaining atop the league standings alongside Pagosa Springs (4-3, 3-0 2A IML).<\/p>\n

M-CHS will host Pagosa Springs next Friday at Panther Stadium for Senior Night in a game with major implications for the league championship and playoff positioning. Kickoff is set for 7 p.m. The Panthers\u2013Pirates matchup will be broadcast on 98.7 FM KRTZ and streamed online at https:\/\/krtzradio.com.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

senior Jonah Ritter looks to catch a pass in the end zone against the coverage of Sanford\u2019s Colton Reynolds in a contest against the Mustangs at Bluejay Field. Erika Alvero\/Special to The Journal MANCOS \u2013 Mancos and Montezuma-Cortez entered Friday night with a chance to stay atop their respective leagues. However, in contests against […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16067,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[38,39,28,37,36],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-16066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-dolores-high-school","tag-dove-creek-high-school","tag-headlines","tag-mancos-high-school","tag-montezuma-cortez-high-school"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16066","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=16066"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16066\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20758,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16066\/revisions\/20758"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16066"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=16066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}