{"id":29663,"date":"2024-01-19T18:50:54","date_gmt":"2024-01-19T18:50:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/hunter-goodall-leads-montezuma-cortez-seniors-to-grand-finale\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T07:01:27","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T07:01:27","slug":"hunter-goodall-leads-montezuma-cortez-seniors-to-grand-finale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/hunter-goodall-leads-montezuma-cortez-seniors-to-grand-finale\/","title":{"rendered":"Hunter Goodall leads Montezuma-Cortez seniors to grand finale"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Montezuma-Cortez's
Montezuma-Cortez's Hunter Goodall hoists and controls Dove Creek's Myles Ives during their bout at 190 pounds Thursday night, Dec. 7, inside M-CHS Gymnasium. The triangular-hosting Panthers lost to both the Bulldogs and the Ignacio Bobcats. Goodall, however, defeated Ives and also won by forfeit against IHS, then won five more times (in six matches) at the two-day Western Slope Showdown in Montrose.
\n(Joel Preist\/Special to The Journal)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

In spring 2020, then-freshman Hunter Goodall received a tall order from the football coaching staff \u2013 play as starting offensive lineman for a fledgling program trying to win games against perennial 3A powerhouses in the infamous COVID-altered athletic schedule.<\/p>\n

Welcome to high school athletics.<\/p>\n

In that shortened season, Goodall and a green, undersized squad scratched out a gritty 2-4 season \u2013 but more important, established a belief that if the group stuck together, there would be brighter days on the horizon.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember it like it was yesterday,\u201d said Goodall. \u201cI was going up against grown men, but once I grew, it got a little bit easier.\u201d<\/p>\n

The brighter days would indeed come for the Panthers, but not necessarily for Goodall himself. He learned after his freshman year that he had been competing on a torn ACL and meniscus for a portion of the season.<\/p>\n

\"Montezuma-Cortez\u2019s
Montezuma-Cortez\u2019s Hunter Goodall goes for a pin of Alamosa\u2019s Benjie Tomas during season-opening action in 2021. Joel Priest\/Special to the Herald<\/span>Joel Priest\/Special to the Herald<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The recovery from surgery wiped out his sophomore seasons for both football and wrestling, before beginning the long road back during his junior year.<\/p>\n

Now, in his senior season, Goodall approaches 30 victories, having become one of the dominant forces on the mat in 3A wrestling. One of three seniors for head coach Ryan Daves, Goodall and the Panthers have their sights set on the biggest prize.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019d be the first state tournament for any of us seniors in wrestling,\u201d said Goodall, whose state ranking in the 190-pound classification has him squarely among the top 10 in the field, \u201cand all three of us want to go out with wrestling being back at Montezuma-Cortez \u2013 especially since it\u2019s been a few years since anyone from here has gone to state.\u201d<\/p>\n

Goodall, alongside classmates DJ Vreeken and Airoughn Morris, put in the work to get a shot over the weekend of Feb. 9-10 in the 3A regional meet. Vreeken\u2019s climb to the upper echelon of the 157-pound division mirrored Goodall\u2019s in a number of ways, as both responded from missed time to now enter the regional meet with a strong chance to make it to Denver.<\/p>\n

Morris, meanwhile, shows his versatility as one of the few student-athletes in CHSAA history to compete in the two-sport combination of golf and wrestling. Morris qualified for state on the links in the fall, and now looks for one more state trip for the icing on the cake, competing in the 144-pound classification.<\/p>\n

The battles in the trenches, both on the front line for the Panther football team, as well as in the one-on-one pressure cooker on the mat, have been challenges that Goodall has relished over the years. \u201cWith the offensive line, we\u2019d split off during practice \u2013 so it was easy for us to work together, training together, and we became unstoppable.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of my best friends from M-CHS are my teammates,\u201d he said, reflecting on the Panthers football journey that included the program\u2019s best season in 65 years during his junior year.<\/p>\n

Some of the benefit of having \u201cbackup\u201d on the field with a unit of five disappears when Goodall takes to the mat.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter surgery, there are certain wrestling moves that I\u2019m not able to do, so I\u2019ve had to work hardest to adjust to what I can do to make up for my limitations,\u201d Goodall said.<\/p>\n

Goodall\u2019s father, Keve, has had a firsthand account of his growth \u2013 coaching his son from peewee all the way through high school in football, and during his developmental years in wrestling as well. \u201cI\u2019ve liked having him by my side \u2013 even on the days when he can be tough because he expects a lot from me \u2013 because I know not a lot of kids have their father around for this \u2013 it\u2019s made me really appreciative.\u201d<\/p>\n

The final regular season matches for the Panthers will include a trip to Page, Arizona, for the Sand Devil Tournament on Jan. 19-20, before taking on the field at the Butch Mellon Invitational in Ignacio the following weekend. It all leads up to the 3A Region 3 tournament in Gunnison on Feb. 9-10, where the Panthers and 13 other squads will vie to land as many competitors as possible in the top four of their respective weight divisions, which would earn them qualification to the state championships \u2013 held at Ball Arena in Denver over the weekend of Feb. 15-17.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Resilient two-sport standout hopes to cap his high school career in style<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29266,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-29663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29663","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=29663"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29663\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80820,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29663\/revisions\/80820"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29663"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=29663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}