{"id":72027,"date":"2017-03-16T18:34:28","date_gmt":"2017-03-17T00:34:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cortez-junior-basketball-tournament-grows-in-second-year\/"},"modified":"2017-03-17T00:34:28","modified_gmt":"2017-03-17T00:34:28","slug":"cortez-junior-basketball-tournament-grows-in-second-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cortez-junior-basketball-tournament-grows-in-second-year\/","title":{"rendered":"Cortez junior basketball tournament grows in second year"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=fcad5980-9988-4949-bf1c-5bd37dc35d51&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1554\" alt=\"Over 600 local elementary students competed Saturday in the Storm Basketball tournament at Montezuma-Cortez High School.\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">Over 600 local elementary students competed Saturday in the Storm Basketball tournament at Montezuma-Cortez High School.<\/span><span class=\"credit\">Sam Green\/The Journal<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><p>In its second year, the Cortez Junior Basketball Tournament again hit a swish, with more than 600 elementary and middle students competing.<\/p>\n<p>This year, the tournament hosted 30 teams, eight more than last year. Refereed games were played at the Montezuma-Cortez High School gym all day Saturday.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe whole idea is for local kids to get some competition at a higher levels to prepare them for playing in high school,\u201d said Todd Plewe,  of Montezuma Storm, the local junior club team.<\/p>\n<p>The TC Blaze seventh- grade team defeated Page in the boys championship game. The eighth-grade TC Blaze team defeated Northern Arizona Hoopsters in the girls championship game.<\/p>\n<p>While none of the seven Cortez teams won their tournaments, the fifth- and sixth- grade boys teams came in second, and the seventh-grade boys came in third place.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe want to thank the school district for their support, and the referees did a great job,\u201d Plewe said.<\/p>\n<p>More than 60 local youths play for Montezuma Storm, and travel to Ignacio, Montrose, Pagosa Springs, and Cedar City, Utah, to test their skills against high quality teams.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe kids have a lot of fun. It\u2019s well run with good volunteers,\u201d Plewe said.<\/p>\n<p>Montezuma Storm Basketball program serves children grades 5-12 in Montezuma County.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>600 kids compete<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":72028,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[600,21,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-72027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-basketball","tag-cortez","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72027","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=72027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72027\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72027"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=72027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}