After sitting out the first half of the season with an injury, Montezuma-Cortez High School grappler Jayven Valdez has quickly rounded into form and is leading his team to postseason competition.<\/p>\n
The Panthers\u2019 and Valdez\u2019s latest solid performance came Saturday at the Butch Melton Invitational with a seventh-place finish in the 16-team tournament. Valdez finished second in the 113-pound weight class.<\/p>\n
Among Valdez\u2019s wins was a 7-5 decision victory over Pagosa Springs\u2019 Trevor Torrez and pin victories over Mancos\u2019 Carter Galloway, Bayfield\u2019s Cade Kruger and Newcomb\u2019s Rashaad Keedah. Valdez\u2019s only loss came to Cedaredge\u2019s Lane Hunsberger in the championship match.<\/p>\n
Also wrestling well for M-CHS was Austin Featherman, who finished third in the 126-pound weight class after winning four of his five matches.<\/p>\n
Featherman\u2019s victories came by pin over Pagosa Springs\u2019 David Thomas and Piedra Vista\u2019s Isaiah Charley. Featherman also won by technical fall over Newcomb\u2019s Logan Curley and posted a major-decision victory over Ignacio\u2019s Keaton McCoy. Featherman\u2019s only loss came to Aztec\u2019s Dylan St. Vrain.<\/p>\n
Other Panthers who competed in the one-day tournament included Ethan Root, who won two of his four matches and placed fourth at 152 pounds, and Casen Allmon, who won two of his four matches at 160 pounds.<\/p>\n
Caden Cote finished 2-3 at 132 pounds, and Jaquin Laner finished 0-4 in the B-bracket of the 132-pound class.<\/p>\n
M-CHS finished seventh with 40.5 points, and Cedaredge won the tournament with 182 points. Farmington High School finished second, and Aztec finished third.<\/p>\n
Next up for M-CHS be road matchups against Durango and Pagosa Springs place on Thursday and Friday, respectively. The team will then prepare for its regional tournament, in Grand Junction, Feb. 14-15.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
places second<\/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":[36,29,346],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-66241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-montezuma-cortez-high-school","tag-newsletter","tag-sports"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66241","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=66241"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66241\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":90418,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66241\/revisions\/90418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66241"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=66241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}