{"id":37904,"date":"2022-10-09T01:59:02","date_gmt":"2022-10-09T07:59:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/montezuma-cortez-tops-bayfield-for-fifth-consecutive-football-win\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T02:40:58","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T08:40:58","slug":"montezuma-cortez-tops-bayfield-for-fifth-consecutive-football-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/montezuma-cortez-tops-bayfield-for-fifth-consecutive-football-win\/","title":{"rendered":"Montezuma-Cortez tops Bayfield for fifth consecutive football win"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Montezuma-Cortez
Montezuma-Cortez High School sophomore Tay Wheat fends off a defender as he breaks free for a long run against Kirtland Central on Friday night. (Ben Bradley\/Special to The Journal)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

Getting past the Bayfield Wolverines has been one of the primary hurdles for any contender in the 2A Southwest League for the past couple of decades.<\/p>\n

Montezuma-Cortez High School\u2019s third-year head coach, Ivan Mack, knew that, even as Bayfield entered with a winless record to start its 2022 campaign, that his Panthers would have to show tremendous grit to topple the Wolverines.<\/p>\n

Bayfield had already played state title favorites in Utah (San Juan) and New Mexico (Bloomfield), along with defending Colorado 1A state champ Centauri.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the Panthers (6-1, 2-0 2A SWL) hadn\u2019t beaten Bayfield (0-6, 0-1 2A SWL) since their last winning season, in 2014, but came in brimming with confidence after their Homecoming domination of Salida.<\/p>\n

No. 9 M-CHS found a way, however, thanks to a late comeback, to deny the Wolverines an eighth consecutive win in the series, as the Panthers won 24-16.<\/p>\n

The Wolverines made an early statement, building an early lead and limiting the high-octane Panther offense. An injury to star sophomore Tay Wheat further hampered the visitors\u2019 efforts to take control of the contest. A lone first half score for M-CHS meant that the Panthers didn\u2019t lead at the half for only the second time this season, in a 10-10 deadlock.<\/p>\n

Bayfield and M-CHS played out a defensive-minded third quarter, but a big turnover from M-CHS set the Wolverines with a short field to start the fourth.<\/p>\n

Bayfield punched in the go-ahead score in the first minute of the fourth quarter to inch ahead 16-10.<\/p>\n

However, M-CHS responded with a methodical drive down the field, pushing into the Bayfield red zone. Senior quarterback Jake Blackmer produced a couple of big runs, but none bigger than his 1-yard dive to give the Panthers their first lead.<\/p>\n

From there, the defense turned up the volume, forcing a Bayfield fumble and setting up another TD with less than a minute to go. The resulting Panther defensive stop sealed the win to move the Panthers\u2019 win streak to five in a row.<\/p>\n

M-CHS will return home for Senior Day on Friday, Oct. 14, versus Pagosa Springs at 7 p.m. \u2013 another pivotal league matchup. Currently, M-CHS sits tied with No. 2 Delta (7-0, 2-0 2A SWL) for the top spot in the standings \u2013 with the two teams on a potential league title collision course when they face each other on Friday, Oct. 28, in Delta.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Panthers\u2019 win ends seven-year drought against Wolverines<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25983,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[1871,926,28,36,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-37904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-bayfield-high-school","tag-football","tag-headlines","tag-montezuma-cortez-high-school","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37904","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=37904"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37904\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83826,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37904\/revisions\/83826"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37904"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=37904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}