{"id":73710,"date":"2016-08-25T19:17:53","date_gmt":"2016-08-26T01:17:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/mancos-football-opens-at-home\/"},"modified":"2016-08-26T01:17:53","modified_gmt":"2016-08-26T01:17:53","slug":"mancos-football-opens-at-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/mancos-football-opens-at-home\/","title":{"rendered":"Mancos football opens at home"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=a3bd2ea7-fd10-4655-9b56-134256245a68&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"1472\" height=\"1036\" alt=\"Axel Bonde cuts up field during a game last season. Bonde will be a key piece in the Blue Jays\u2019 offense this season.\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">Axel Bonde cuts up field during a game last season. Bonde will be a key piece in the Blue Jays\u2019 offense this season.<\/span><span class=\"credit\">du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><p>After a two-year hiatus, Mancos principal Adam Priestley has returned to coaching to help lead the Blue Jays football team.<\/p>\n<p>Priestley and Josh Gardner will serve as co-head coaches for the 2016 season, following the retirement of former co-head coach Bill Parsons.<\/p>\n<p>Last year, Parsons and Gardner led the Jays to a 6-4 record and an appearance in the 8-man state playoffs.<\/p>\n<p>Mancos lost five valuable seniors from last year\u2019s squad to graduation, but they\u2019ve got a handful of significant contributors returning.<\/p>\n<p>Axel Bonde and Bowen Strazza-Whalen will hold down the backfield, Kaleb Hargraves, Richard Martinez and Chance Morgan-Garcia offer flexibility in the secondary and, perhaps most importantly, is the number of returning linemen.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have a big line this year with Liam Cooper, Brady Sanders and Casey Orange,\u201d said Priestley. \u201cSo we\u2019re pretty excited about seeing what those guys can do.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The offensive line will look to create holes for running backs Bonde and Strazza-Whalen, and protect first-year quarterback Riley Burton.<\/p>\n<p>Gardner noted that not only are the offensive and defensive lines big, but they\u2019re deep, and players are fighting for positions.<\/p>\n<p>Some of that depth is due to the incoming freshman class.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat\u2019s interesting is we\u2019ve got a freshman class that is going to be pretty exciting to watch,\u201d said Priestley. \u201cThey\u2019re taking some lumps right now, but just the way they\u2019re progressing, it\u2019ll be really exciting to see mid-year to the end of the season.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Jays tout a promising line and talented freshman class, but Priestley said that the team\u2019s biggest strength is its chemistry.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe don\u2019t have a lot of \u2018I,\u2019 he explained. \u201cWe\u2019ve got a lot of kids that just want to play as a team. But we\u2019ll find out on Friday night what\u2019s going to be our bread and butter.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Blue Jays are set to kick off the 2016 season on Friday at home against Plateau Valley at 6 p.m.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>tout big linemen and talented freshman class<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":73711,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[37],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-73710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-mancos-high-school"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73710","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=73710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73710\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73710"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=73710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}