<\/p>\n
Incredibly able to stave off match point five times, pull even, then swipe Game 3 \u2013 via kill shots by senior Lanae Dragswolf and freshman Avery Wright \u2013 to stay alive in Tuesday night\u2019s home opener, the Montezuma-Cortez volleyball team had fans believing they could pull off another 3A Intermountain League upset in the wake of last Saturday\u2019s five-game stunner out in La Jara over defending champion Centauri.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, that\u2019s just how we\u2019re capable of playing, but we \u2026 haven\u2019t quite figured out how to always play that way. Yet,\u201d head coach Maddie Wright stated afterward.<\/p>\n
\u201cHuge shout out to Amber for serving all those, taking her time,\u201d she added, referring to sophomore libero Amber Wood, who held serve against Bayfield all the way from 19-24 in the third until M-CHS prevailed 26-24. \u201cA couple close calls hit the net, put me on the edge of my seat!\u201d<\/p>\n
And got BHS counterpart Terene Foutz all the way out of hers, fearing an epic collapse and possible third consecutive \u2013 the Lady Wolverines fell in Pagosa Springs last Saturday to both PSHS and Alamosa (M-CHS, meanwhile, defeated Monte Vista in addition to CHS) \u2013 league loss.<\/p>\n
Reverting more or less to their form shown during Game 1, when senior Rachel Bauer nearly served the Lady Panthers out of their own building \u2014 she first took the ball with a 5-2 lead and remained on serve until it reached 16-2 \u2014 the visitors quickly recovered in Game 4.<\/p>\n
Senior Aryelle Wright smacked a kill for an early 3-1 M-CHS advantage, but the visitors took control for good at 5-4, separated to 12-7 via smashes by senior Tymbree Florian and junior Mavis Edwards, maxed their lead out at both 17-11 and 23-17, then settled the issue when Edwards viciously split a double-block to give Bayfield a 25-15, 25-21, 24-26, 25-20 road win.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe came in with a positive attitude. Didn\u2019t really know what to expect because we haven\u2019t played Bayfield in a while, but we played OK,\u201d said Dragswolf, who began the match scoring with a block.<\/p>\n
\u201cAgainst Centauri as well, we fought as hard as we could and it came out into a win. Today it just didn\u2019t go that far.\u201d<\/p>\n
Incredibly forgetting almost completely their Game 1 performance, M-CHS (4-3, 2-2 IML) pushed the pace in Game 2 and led 12-4 before the Lady Wolverines (3-6, 2-2) clawed back to tie at 20-20.<\/p>\n
Lady Panther sophomore Devon McHenry then hit long, Florian stuffed senior Chloe Seaburn at the strings, and Bayfield freshman Annie Fusco crushed a kill through the middle, prompting Wright into a timeout.<\/p>\n
\u201cDefinitely had a lot of first-game jitters. It\u2019s the first home game, they were excited, they didn\u2019t really know what to expect with the crowd,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSecond set, I told them, \u2018Welcome to the party! We\u2019ve been here before; let\u2019s start again!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
But a netted swing put BHS up 24-20, and Bayfield went up two-love in the battle via a kill by senior reserve Tessa Heydinger off a perfect cross-court Florian set.<\/p>\n
Avery Wright finished with nine kills for Montezuma-Cortez while McHenry logged seven, Aryelle Wright five and Dragswolf four. Sophomore setter Leigha Comisky equaled Florian\u2019s 23 assists, while Wood registered 15 digs and Comisky 13.<\/p>\n
\u201cDigging a hole at the beginning and constantly trying to \u2018dig\u2019 out \u2014 I think that\u2019s almost kind of what they\u2019re comfortable with,\u201d Wright said of her squad, tongue-in-cheek.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s what they did, and tried to do, but Bayfield\u2019s a good team and we were unable to pull through this time.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe really wanted the win, and I feel like we could have done better,\u201d said Dragswolf. \u201cWe \u2026 messed up, but we came together as a team, worked hard together and wanted every ball.\u201d<\/p>\n
Up next, the Lady Panthers will continue IML play Saturday, Sept. 22, at home versus Alamosa (13-0, 5-0).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u2018We came together as a team, worked hard together\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":97867,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5770],"tags":[36,346],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-97866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-high-school-sports","tag-montezuma-cortez-high-school","tag-sports"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97866","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=97866"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97866\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97866"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=97866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}