{"id":22929,"date":"2025-03-28T13:17:50","date_gmt":"2025-03-28T19:17:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/five-athletes-named-to-all-state-hoops-teams\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T22:21:01","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:21:01","slug":"five-athletes-named-to-all-state-hoops-teams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/five-athletes-named-to-all-state-hoops-teams\/","title":{"rendered":"Five athletes named to all-state hoops teams"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image naviga-align-left alignleft\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=98e6e7b0-3b86-5e4c-b324-5816c02e148e&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"2000\" height=\"2099\" alt=\"M-CHS senior Tay Wheat goes up for a shot. (Erika Alvero\/Special to The Journal)\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">M-CHS senior Tay Wheat goes up for a shot. (Erika Alvero\/Special to The Journal)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n<p>DENVER \u2013 The end of the basketball seasons didn\u2019t come without its reward for southwest Colorado athletes.<\/p>\n<p>With Colorado High School Activities Association  announcing its all-state squads earlier this week, the Four Corners region earned their share of honorees to celebrate their hardwood accomplishments. Three Dove Creek student-athletes, along with one apiece from Montezuma-Cortez and Mancos, landed on their respective classification\u2019s honorable mention all-state squad.<\/p>\n<p>Panthers senior Tay Wheat led his team in scoring and assists as part of a 17-7 season, runner-up finish in the Intermountain League, and appearance in the 4A postseason. Wheat made it on to the state\u2019s honor roll for the second time in basketball, joining his honorable mention nod from his junior season. The dynamic guard served as a catalyst for the run-and-gun Panthers, providing his highest scoring season in his last campaign with the orange-and-black.<\/p>\n<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=f1000633-9e48-54f1-8463-dd9ca10e6f13&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" alt=\"Photo_12b: Dove Creek senior Ralynn Hickman brings the ball down the court in a contest this winter.\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">Photo_12b: Dove Creek senior Ralynn Hickman brings the ball down the court in a contest this winter.<\/span><span class=\"credit\">Erika Alvero<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=6899058b-fd68-54e9-a406-754d3d7dc4cf&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1663\" alt=\"Dove Creek junior Taylor Hampton protects the ball in a contest earlier this winter against Ignacio. (Erika Alvero\/Special to The Journal)\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">Dove Creek junior Taylor Hampton protects the ball in a contest earlier this winter against Ignacio. (Erika Alvero\/Special to The Journal)<\/span><span class=\"credit\">Erika Alvero<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=a4dcc035-d9e7-5241-81dd-16e643407483&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" alt=\"Dove Creek senior Sheldon Gardner protects the ball from Ignacio junior Stoney White Thunder-Lucero in a contest this past winter. (Erika Alvero\/Special to The Journal)\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">Dove Creek senior Sheldon Gardner protects the ball from Ignacio junior Stoney White Thunder-Lucero in a contest this past winter. (Erika Alvero\/Special to The Journal)<\/span><span class=\"credit\">Erika Alvero<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image naviga-align-left alignleft\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=c3d3991c-c101-5681-9efd-9cef879a98f4&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"2000\" height=\"2729\" alt=\"Mancos freshman Tinsley Aspromonte elevates to get a shot away over Ignacio's Alyssa Atencio in a contest at MHS.    Ben Bradley\/Special to The Journal\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">Mancos freshman Tinsley Aspromonte elevates to get a shot away over Ignacio's Alyssa Atencio in a contest at MHS.    Ben Bradley\/Special to The Journal<\/span><span class=\"credit\">cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><p>Dove Creek landed a pair of seniors in their trio of honorees, with Ralynn Hickman and Sheldon Gardner joining junior Taylor Hampton as the Bulldog representatives.<\/p>\n<p>Hickman and Hampton led the \u2018Dogs to the postseason in their first year playing in the 2A classification, earning an 18-6 record and runner-up finish in the San Juan Basin League. The duo finished one-two on the team in scoring and rebounding, with Hickman operating from the perimeter and Hampton dominating in the post.<\/p>\n<p>Gardner averaged nearly a double-double for the Bulldogs, as part of a season in which the Bulldogs took second in the SJBL with a 16-8 overall record. Much like the girls team, the DC boys qualified for the 2A postseason in their maiden season in the larger division.<\/p>\n<p>Mancos freshman Tinsley Aspromonte took the league by storm in her first high school season, leading the Bluejays in scoring and ranking among the top performers in the SJBL. She also paced the young Bluejays in steals to help the team earn fourth in the league standings with a 7-13 record.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Creek nominees lead the way<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22930,"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-22929","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\/22929","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=22929"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22929\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77908,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22929\/revisions\/77908"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22929"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=22929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}