{"id":68730,"date":"2016-10-20T16:29:25","date_gmt":"2016-10-20T22:29:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/m-chs-soccer-team-goes-out-with-a-bang\/"},"modified":"2016-10-20T22:29:25","modified_gmt":"2016-10-20T22:29:25","slug":"m-chs-soccer-team-goes-out-with-a-bang","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/m-chs-soccer-team-goes-out-with-a-bang\/","title":{"rendered":"M-CHS soccer team goes out with a bang"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Manny
Manny Martinez, pictured here from a game earlier this season, scored four goals in the Panthers\u2019 season-ending win over Pagosa Springs on Tuesday.<\/span>Sam Green\/The Journal<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

After starting the season 1-1, the Montezuma-Cortez soccer team lost nine straight contests to fall to 1-10 and was statistically eliminated from the postseason.<\/p>\n

However, the Panthers then won back-to-back matches against Ridgway and Telluride. And on Tuesday, they looked to end their season on a high note against Pagosa Springs.<\/p>\n

Manuel Martinez scored the game\u2019s first goal seven minutes in to give M-CHS an early advantage, but the Pirates netted two goals later in the first to lead 2-1 at the break.<\/p>\n

Pagosa scored twice more in the second half and led 4-1 with just 14 minutes remaining, seemingly dashing the Panthers\u2019 hopes of finishing the year with a win.<\/p>\n

But Martinez wasn\u2019t done.<\/p>\n

In the final 13 minutes, the senior midfielder scored three goals to tie the contest at 4. And then in overtime, sophomore Juan Para scored the golden goal in the 86th minute to give the Panthers a season-ending 5-4 victory.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a pretty crazy last 20 minutes with overtime,\u201d M-CHS head coach Sean Fitzgerald said chuckling.<\/p>\n

Martinez led the furious comeback offensively, and Para put the cherry on top with the game winner in OT, but goalkeeper Skyler Yarbrough was also fantastic, finishing with an eye-popping 18 saves.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe felt he didn\u2019t do well because he had four goals, but those four goals went through 10 other people,\u201d Fitzgerald said. \u201cBut he had a ton of shots and I think he played phenomenal for not every playing goalie and just stepping in the last three games.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Panthers finished the 2016 campaign with a 4-10 overall record, but they were able to close it with three straight wins and send seniors Yarbrough, Martinez and Jesus Ruiz out with a W.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that was a big deal for them,\u201d said Fitzgerald. \u201cI think it\u2019s nice for any senior to get their last win, but three in a row is something awesome to go out on \u2013 especially coming back last night from three down.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Fitzgerald hopes that the team\u2019s momentum carries into next season, he said that he and assistant coach Robert Laymon will be sad to say goodbye to this year\u2019s team \u2013 calling them one of, if not the closest team he\u2019s ever coached and referring to them to as a family.<\/p>\n

\u201cRobert and I love every single one of those kids,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd it will be kind of a sad end-of-year banquet that we have because it was one of those teams that you just don\u2019t want to let go.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Panthers come from behind to beat Pagosa Springs and end season on three-game win streak<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":68731,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-68730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68730","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=68730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68730\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68730"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=68730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}