With a win Friday against Fruita Monument, the Demons cliched the Southwestern League title and a likely first round home playoff matchup. What was yet to be determined was the playoff seeding and the opponent the Demons would be matched up with.
On Sunday, they found out.
The Demons earned a No. 12 seed out of 32 teams. Their first round opponent, Denver West (10-4-1, 4-4 5A/4A Denver Prep), will have to travel to Durango for Wednesday’s match and Demons head coach Dalon Parker knows what that means.
“Whenever a team has to travel from the front range to us, that gives us the upper hand,” said Parker. “We’re happy with the seed we got. We feel like we earned it and it was a fair spot to put us in. We were probably one or two games away from being a No. 6 seed or even a No. 3 but, in the end, I think they got it right.”
Denver West and Durango played two common opponents this season. They both beat Englewood badly and both lost to Denver North by one goal. The records are similar so the home field advantage and the travel should tip the edge to Durango.
The goal for the Demons is simply to do better than their second round exit last year. If they can get into the third round, anything can happen. To get there, Parker is going to use a different approach to preparation this time around than he did in previous years.
“We’re going to worry about us and focus on what we do,” he said. “The last couple times we did this we looked at a lot of film and tried to break down the opponents. This time, we’re going to spend more time working on getting better at what we do. I’ll look at some video so we know what to expect but I know that if we can pressure them and push the tempo like we can, we can lock them up. We just have to play our game.”
The time of Wednesday’s match hasn’t been determined. It will most likely be either a 3:30 or 4 p.m. start. The match will take place at Riverview Park in Durango.
jfries@durangoherald.com
