{"id":71342,"date":"2016-11-30T19:29:23","date_gmt":"2016-12-01T02:29:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/m-chs-swimmers-take-aim-at-record-book\/"},"modified":"2016-12-01T02:29:23","modified_gmt":"2016-12-01T02:29:23","slug":"m-chs-swimmers-take-aim-at-record-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/m-chs-swimmers-take-aim-at-record-book\/","title":{"rendered":"M-CHS swimmers take aim at record book"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=1c18a6f6-c8e9-46f4-85f7-aedc2cddb6da&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1525\" alt=\"M-CHS swimmers cheer for teammate Alexx Earley during a relay last season.\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">M-CHS swimmers cheer for teammate Alexx Earley during a relay last season.<\/span><span class=\"credit\">Sam Green\/The Journal<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><p>The Montezuma-Cortez swim team hits the pool for its season opener in Durango on Friday, before returning to Cortez on Saturday for its first home meet.<\/p>\n<p>And for the first time, the Lady Panthers will also field a dive team, coached by Virginia King.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe team is very excited to have a dive team this season,\u201d said M-CHS head coach Gayle Earley. \u201cWe are welcoming our dive coach Virginia King to our team family, and the team has seven beginning divers.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The swim team, on the other hand, returns a group of experienced swimmers, led by senior captains Sam Bagge and Bailey Duran.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI have a really seasoned team,\u201d said Earley. \u201cEverybody is coming back and they\u2019ve all swam competitively before.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Bagge is back after qualifying for state last season in both the 50-yard freestyle and 100-yard freestyle. She was also a part of the Lady Panthers\u2019 state qualifying 200-yard freestyle relay team, which included returning sophomore Jenna Barner.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSam is going to be a strong individual probably in the 100 fly, 100 back, 100 free and 50 free,\u201d Earley explained. \u201cI see Jenna Free going far in the 50 free, the 100 free and the 100 breast.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Earley also views sisters Bailey and Caisey Duran as key contributors.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBailey Duran, who is a senior this year, is going to target the 500 free and the 200 free,\u201d she said. \u201cCaisey Duran, who is a junior, is also looking really competitive this year. And she\u2019s going to go after the 100 back and try to break her own record time that she holds at the high school.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Because there have only been two swim and dive divisions in the past \u2013 Class 4A and Class 5A \u2013 M-CHS had been competing in the Class 4A division.<\/p>\n<p>However, this season the Colorado High School Activities Association has added a class 3A division, where the Lady Panthers are now slotted.<\/p>\n<p>The drop in class doesn\u2019t necessarily change the team\u2019s schedule or competition, but it does affect its state qualifying times.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re now swimming in the 3A category, so our state qualifying times are slightly lower than before,\u201d said Earley. \u201cState qualifying is based on time. So we are about, on average, three to five seconds slower than 4A times.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Lady Panthers\u2019 main focus is advancing swimmers to the Class 3A State Championships, but Earley said their other focus is on the M-CHS record book.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re going to aim for the 4A times, (with the goal of qualifying for state),\u201d she said. \u201cBut another major goal is to beat the high school records. The relays are all aiming to beat records and a lot of the girls have individual goals to beat the records.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Panthers return seasoned swim team, add dive team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":71343,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-71342","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\/71342","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=71342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71342\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71342"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=71342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}