{"id":73706,"date":"2016-08-25T19:15:14","date_gmt":"2016-08-26T01:15:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/m-chs-softball-team-opens-saturday-in-rifle\/"},"modified":"2016-08-26T01:15:14","modified_gmt":"2016-08-26T01:15:14","slug":"m-chs-softball-team-opens-saturday-in-rifle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/m-chs-softball-team-opens-saturday-in-rifle\/","title":{"rendered":"M-CHS softball team opens Saturday in Rifle"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"The
The Lady Panthers huddle at the mound during a game last season. This year, M-CHS joins the Western Slope League.<\/span>Sam Green\/The Journal<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Entering his second year as Montezuma-Cortez head softball coach, Angelo Topaha hopes to see his team tally more wins this year in a new league.<\/p>\n

Last year, the Lady Panthers were 0-10 in the 4A\/5A Southwestern League and finished the season with a 2-14 record.<\/p>\n

But this season, M-CHS will play in the 3A Western Slope League with Aspen, Basalt, Cedaredge, Delta, Gunnison and Meeker.<\/p>\n

The Panthers got a glimpse of Cedaredge and Delta last year in non-conference play, and one of their two wins came in a 12-9 victory over Delta. Topaha said that while they may be unfamiliar with other league members, he\u2019s excited to see how his squad stacks up.<\/p>\n

M-CHS lost six seniors from last year\u2019s team to graduation, so for the first two weeks of practice Topaha said he was still moving players around trying to find the right fits.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s going to be pretty hard to fill the holes that the seniors left here,\u201d he said. \u201cWe lost six seniors, pretty much all the infield and two outfielders. So there are some gaps to fill and that in itself is challenging.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re a young group,\u201d he continued. \u201cWe\u2019ve only got three seniors. It\u2019s just a young squad so we\u2019re still trying to put girls in the order that I think will be a good match for them.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the Lady Panthers may be young, they return three seniors in Gabby Begay, Ahnna Higgins and Halee Pell, as well junior pitcher Danika Noyes and catcher Payton Keith.<\/p>\n

Toss in returners Hanna Molzahn, Morgan Short, Kailey Case and incoming freshmen, and Topaha says that the team\u2019s strength will be its speed on the basepaths.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that will work in our favor,\u201d he said. \u201cI think it\u2019s speed that we can do a lot of damage. If we can contact balls with the bat, it will be really good to see.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Lady Panthers open on Saturday against Rifle, and they\u2019ll play on the road until their first home game on September 17 against Basalt.<\/p>\n

M-CHS plays at home on just three occasions, with double headers against Basalt and Meeker as the only two home league contests.<\/p>\n

And although the Panthers have departed from the Southwestern League, they\u2019ll keep the rivalry game with Durango alive with a home battle against the Demons on September 20.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Angelo Topaha says speed is team\u2019s greatest strength<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":73707,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[36],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-73706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-montezuma-cortez-high-school"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73706","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=73706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73706\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73706"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=73706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}