Brendan Ploen\/The Durango Herald<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\u201cWe felt that was looking out for not only our student-athletes but our communities,\u201d Saylor said. \u201cAllowing those family members that did make the trip and were going to be here feel like that they could be a part of what is really a special time and event for those students. While it was a difficult decision to not let entire fan bases and communities in, it was important to us to make sure that we had immediate families and those that did make the trip with their students to still be able to be involved with the whole event.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the Budweiser Events Center, additional signs reminding fans to wash their hands were put up, but there were no extra hand-sanitizing stations around the arena.<\/p>\n
For Limon girls basketball head coach Bart O\u2019Dwyer, seeing a fraction of a normally-full fan base was strange. He said the last 24 hours were hectic, but he felt CHSAA made the correct decision.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m appreciative to have the tournament and not cancel on these kids,\u201d O\u2019Dwyer said after a quarterfinal win over No. 8 Holly. \u201cWe\u2019ve got a lot of seniors on the team, and it was hard on them last night. Today, it\u2019s going to be a year from now if it\u2019s going to be the right or wrong decision, and time will tell. It was really different today. Limon\u2019s fan base is really big and they do a great job of following us. It\u2019s tough, but it\u2019s what we\u2019re dealing with and every team is dealing with this issue all weekend.\u201d<\/p>\n
Peyton High School players warm up before the Class 2A Great 8 Thursday at the Budweiser Events Center.<\/span>Joel Priest\/For The Durango Herald<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>When CHSAA announced its decision Wednesday that it would allow a limited attendance, Ignacio High School athletic director Leo Garand said the department was all hands on deck starting at 6:30 a.m. Thursday to spread the word to traveling fans.<\/p>\n
\u201cMelanie Taylor, Rocco Fuschetto and I got on it really early this morning,\u201d Garand said. \u201cWe\u2019ve been fielding a ton of phone calls from different people in the community who were looking for updates. We did our best to spread the word with robo-calls, voicemails.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite smaller-than-usual numbers, Ignacio fans showed up together. Neoma Quintana, the grandmother of Ignacio senior captain Makayla Howell, was happy CHSAA kept the tournament going.<\/p>\n
There were plenty of empty seats at the CHSAA Class 2A state basketball tournament Thursday in Loveland.<\/span>Brendan Ploen\/The Durango Herald<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\u201cI\u2019m really proud of how well we traveled,\u201d Quintana said. \u201cI just wish we would\u2019ve known earlier because the number of people that were going to come up tonight changed their plans last night. We didn\u2019t have much time to get a hold of people, but we\u2019re happy that everybody did come. I\u2019m happy CHSAA changed their mind.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt first when they announced no fans, we kept thinking positively. We thought that something would change when the girls were so upset. But I think in the end, good thoughts prevailed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, those good thoughts only went through Thursday, as the teams at state will now board buses home on Friday morning.<\/p>\n
bploen@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Officials aim to keep tournament going through conclusion Saturday<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":65985,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[992,685,132,28,4902,29,596,2343],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-65984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-college-sports","tag-coronavirus-covid-19","tag-fort-lewis-college","tag-headlines","tag-lacrosse","tag-newsletter","tag-softball","tag-sports-group"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65984","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=65984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65984\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65984"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=65984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}