{"id":46759,"date":"2021-05-13T04:09:00","date_gmt":"2021-05-13T10:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/montezuma-cortez-volleyball-beats-prospect-ridge-to-advance-to-state-semifinals\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T03:34:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T09:34:14","slug":"montezuma-cortez-volleyball-beats-prospect-ridge-to-advance-to-state-semifinals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/montezuma-cortez-volleyball-beats-prospect-ridge-to-advance-to-state-semifinals\/","title":{"rendered":"Montezuma-Cortez volleyball beats Prospect Ridge to advance to state semifinals"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The
The Montezuma-Cortez High School volleyball team celebrates Saturday after beating Delta to advance to the state tournament in Colorado Springs. On Wednesday, the Panthers beat Prospect Ridge Academy to advance to the second round of the state playoffs. (Elsie Walck\/Courtesy photo)<\/span>Courtesy of Elsie Walck<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

COLORADO SPRINGS \u2013 One down, two to go. The Montezuma-Cortez volleyball team continued its state title-bound mission in the quarterfinal round of the 3A State Tournament, as they downed Prospect Ridge Academy, 3-1, to move on to the Final Four.<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t come easy for the second-seeded Panthers. Playing on the Broadmoor World Arena floor under the spotlight of the sport\u2019s biggest stage, a senior-led Panthers squad showed some early nerves, as the Miners (14-2, 9-1 3A Metro) jumped out to an early lead.<\/p>\n

For only the third time all season, head coach Joye McHenry\u2019s Panthers found themselves in a first set hole, as Prospect Ridge closed out the set, 25-14.<\/p>\n

Under such circumstances, the Panthers could have lost the composure that had led them to a 3A IML title. Instead, M-CHS (14-0, 8-0 3A IML) galvanized under the pressure and produced some of their best volleyball of the season.<\/p>\n

<\/p>

The pendulum began to swing in the second set, where senior Myka Glover and junior Avery Wright dominated the front line. Much like they had all season, the duo kept their opponents on the defensive, as the Panthers clawed their way back into the match.<\/p>\n

Key points down the stretch of a back-and-forth set went the way of the orange-and-black, and the Panthers edged Prospect Ridge, 25-23, to even up the match at a set apiece.<\/p>\n

From there, the Panthers began to sense their dominance. Steady play from seniors Amber Wood, Devon McHenry, and Kylie Lake helped steer the Panthers into firm control of the match, as M-CHS took the third set, 25-16.<\/p>\n

With momentum squarely on their side, McHenry\u2019s squad did what they have done so well this season \u2013 close teams out. M-CHS only endured one five-setter en route to their league title and perfect regular season, and weren\u2019t about to let the No. 7 seed Miners back into the match.<\/p>\n

Senior Leigha Comisky, along with Wood, helped to govern the back line to stymie the Miner rallies, as the Panthers put together some big runs in the deciding fourth set. As the final point sealed a 25-20 fourth set clincher, the Panthers celebrated their berth in the Final Four.<\/p>\n

M-CHS gets set to take on Sterling on Thursday, May 13, at 2 p.m. in the state semifinal, with a spot in the state championship match on the line. The No. 3 seeded Tigers (14-2, 8-2 3A Patriot) picked up a quarterfinal victory, 3-1, over Lutheran.<\/p>\n

The other semifinal will pit top-seeded Eaton against No. 5 seed University, with the winners moving on to the title match, which will be competed later that evening at 8 p.m.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s been 20 years and they took third in the state back then when we were in 4A at the time,\u201d Joye McHenry told reporter Brad Cochi<\/a> after the match. \u201cWe haven\u2019t been since we\u2019ve been 3A for the past six years, so it\u2019s exciting. This team has played together forever. We have a lot of seniors, so we have a lot of experience. A lot of them have played club and all of them have had some adversity and some struggles that they\u2019ve had to kind of pull through, so they\u2019re just a really tight-knit group.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

the first set, the undefeated Panthers come roaring back to win three straight <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":46760,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,36,29,346,345],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-46759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-montezuma-cortez-high-school","tag-newsletter","tag-sports","tag-volleyball"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46759","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=46759"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46759\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87015,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46759\/revisions\/87015"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46759"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=46759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}