{"id":36725,"date":"2022-12-19T00:25:13","date_gmt":"2022-12-19T07:25:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/dove-creek-takes-home-holiday-tournament\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T02:32:59","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T08:32:59","slug":"dove-creek-takes-home-holiday-tournament","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/dove-creek-takes-home-holiday-tournament\/","title":{"rendered":"Dove Creek takes home holiday tournament"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The
The Dove Creek girls basketball team poses with their Dove Creek Holiday Tournament trophy after defeating Dolores and Nucla at DCHS (Courtesy photo)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

There\u2019s been no place like home for the holidays for Dove Creek basketball.<\/p>\n

Spending the last weekend before the winter break with their basketball family, the Dove Creek girls basketball program continued an annual tradition \u2013 win the Bulldog Classic.<\/p>\n

The \u2018Dogs controlled their first games on their home floor, opening with a 56-8 victory over Dolores on Friday night before topping Nucla 43-25 in the title game.<\/p>\n

For head coach Julie Kibel, bringing back a loaded roster with plenty of postseason experience elevated the program to the next level. With that in mind, the Bulldogs made sure to stock their nonleague schedule with plenty of stern challenges to help get the Bulldogs battle-tested for the San Juan Basin League and big postseason ambitions.<\/p>\n

Five seniors, including three starters, have brought a leadership style that allows the Bulldogs to pick up where they left off a season ago in terms of how quickly the team picks up new wrinkles in the system.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe leadership is where we need it to be,\u201d said Kibel of her senior class. \u201cThe maturity of these players to know their role and be able to go out there and play within that role \u2013 this is a true team.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dove Creek used their usual formula of tenacious defense and productive ball movement to steadily pull away from an improved Nucla (4-4) squad.<\/p>\n

The Gatlin twins enjoyed one of their best collective outings of the season, led by Kalie\u2019s game-high 13 points, while her sister Kylie collected eight. D.C. (6-2) led 26-15 at the half against the Mustangs, then completely shut down the visitors in the third quarter to put the game out of reach. Senior Destiny Toledo scored the game\u2019s final bucket to score her first points of the season.<\/p>\n

Senior Rylee Hickman scored nine points, while classmate Trista Barnett added eight in the win.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey see the floor so well,\u201d said Kibel. \u201cWe\u2019ve learned to play smarter \u2013 not giving away silly turnovers.\u201d<\/p>\n

The night prior in their victory over Dolores (2-8), eight different Bulldogs etched their name in the score column, with sophomore Ralynn Hickman scoring eight points, while seniors Lexi Gray and Kaylin Smith scored seven and six points, respectively. The Bulldogs scored the game\u2019s first 10 points and never looked back as their defense kept the Bears on their heels for most of the night.<\/p>\n

Their early season travails against Ignacio (57-39) and Centauri (68-67) only seemed to deepen the commitment that the Bulldogs carry on their path to once again make big waves in the 1A scene.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe needed those challenges,\u201d said Kibel of her 3A-heavy schedule, \u201cand we\u2019re going to use those games to our advantage to help us get better \u2013 the way the girls handled those losses (to Ignacio and Centauri) was exactly the way you\u2019d want a mature team to deal with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dove Creek enjoyed winning their home tournament for the second straight year, joining the boys program with that feat \u2013 and now ride a five-game winning streak into the holidays.<\/p>\n

Now, the \u2018Dogs turn their focus toward larger objectives, beginning with the defense of their 2021-22 San Juan Basin League title. League play commences on Saturday, Jan. 7 with a trip to Telluride. From there, meetings with Nucla (Jan. 13) and Mancos (Jan. 17 and Jan. 27) will establish an early league pecking order.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey play together so well,\u201d added Kibel of her team\u2019s chemistry, \u201cand it\u2019s something that I can\u2019t take for granted \u2013 to have a group like this.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bulldogs head to winter break on a run<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36726,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[600,39,28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-36725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-basketball","tag-dove-creek-high-school","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36725","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=36725"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36725\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83429,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36725\/revisions\/83429"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36725"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=36725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}