Books have been written and movies made on the alchemy and synergy \u2013 all the right players at the right time \u2013 that make a winning football team. We can\u2019t articulate the formula, but it\u2019s clear that Dove Creek football had it, winning the eight-man state championship on Nov. 25 in Pueblo. The Bulldogs put Dove Creek on the map for powerhouse football as they built an early lead, then held back Simla for a 26-21 victory.<\/p>\n
Dove Creek owns only the third ever eight-man title won by a team west of I-25, and the first football championship by a program from either Dolores or Montezuma County.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s saying something. Nicely done.<\/p>\n
Many Dove Creek residents \u2013 loud and proud \u2013 were there to witness the win in the Colorado State University-Pueblo Thunderbowl. And they didn\u2019t hold back, celebrating every favorable play. Hundreds more listened from home on radios, sending support long distance.<\/p>\n
As reported in The Journal<\/em>, \u201cThere were definitely moments where you look up and realize you\u2019re in the state championship game,\u201d said senior quarterback Kade Hankins of the giant Jumbotron screen at the stadium\u2019s north end, showing replays of DC touchdowns. \u201cBut between the loudspeakers and the fans, it was hard to hear anything on the field \u2013 but we worked through it. It\u2019ll be something I won\u2019t forget for the rest of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n And when head coach Shane Baughman received his ice bath \u2013 four years in the making \u2013 the Dove Creek crowd roared even more. Years of close reaches for the championship culminated in that moment.<\/p>\n We appreciated Baughman\u2019s humbleness, too, in recognizing all the coaches that came before him.<\/p>\n \u201cI just want to thank all of the coaches who worked with these kids along the way \u2013 the peewee coaches, the middle school coaches \u2013 along with the parents \u2013 they really raised these kids right,\u201d shared Baughman in the celebration. \u201cThey\u2019re high-character kids, and I couldn\u2019t be prouder of them.\u201d<\/p>\n Many congratulations to the Bulldogs \u2013 especially the seven seniors \u2013 and family members who got them to practice, had dinner ready and supported them in any way possible. You\u2019ve all worked hard for this championship and it showed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" have been written and movies made on the alchemy and synergy \u2013 all the right players at the right time \u2013 that make a winning football team. We can\u2019t articulate the formula, but it\u2019s clear that Dove Creek football had it, winning the eight-man state championship on Nov. 25 in Pueblo. The Bulldogs put […]<\/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":[],"tags":[125],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-36909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-newsletter-opinion"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36909","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=36909"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36909\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36909"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=36909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}