The Durango boys soccer program has become accustomed to winning in the regular season and winning the 5A/4A Southwestern League title. This year, the Demons are fighting for the title and haven’t lost since Sept. 19 against Piedra Vista. However, last weekend’s results didn’t help, despite Durango not dropping a game.
On Friday, Durango beat Grand Junction Central on the road 2-0. The Demons had a 1-0 halftime lead before scoring in the second half to seal the game.
The Demons were without star junior forward Dylan Burns, who was with the football team. In his place, sophomore Jed Lawler was called up from JV and scored both goals for the Demons. Durango junior Derek Caudle had an assist as did freshman Stone Larson.
“He's just a kid with no fear,” Durango boys soccer head coach Sean Ackerman said about Lawler. “We throw him into the fire and he just works. You tell him to run he's going to run. You tell him to get a body in he’ll do that. He doesn’t shy away from taking a shot on goal and more often than not he’s pretty accurate.”
On Saturday, the Demons faced off in a huge league matchup against Grand Junction on the road. Durango had to settle for a 2-2 tie after holding leads in the first and second half.
Junior forward Dylan Burns had a goal and senior midfielder Mavrick Rodriguez also had a goal for Durango. Luis Mendez had both goals for the Tigers. Mendez had all five goals for Grand Junction against Durango this year.
“We had the lead twice in that game, so it's a little disappointing get the tie,” Ackerman said. “It's not a loss, but ideally, we have to win those games, especially when we're going to the closing stages 2-1 up.”
It was a disappointing tie also because the Demons lost to Grand Junction 3-2 earlier in the season. Durango is 6-1-1 in the league and Grand Junction is 5-1-1 in league play. The Tigers have three games left against teams they should beat. Since Grand Junction beat Durango earlier in the year, the Tigers could have the league tiebreaker.
Despite allowing two goals, Ackerman said the Demons have improved a lot defensively since the first Grand Junction matchup. He said Durango didn’t make the mistakes the Demons made in the first matchup against Grand Junction.
At 9-2-2 overall, the Demons play at home against Fruita Monument on Saturday at 1 p.m.
Boys and girls cross country teams win Bloomfield Invitational
The Durango cross country teams have run against some of the top cross country programs in Colorado and in the Southwest in some of the biggest regional meets.
On Friday, the Demons raced in a smaller meet in Bloomfield. Durango showed its speed and the girls and boys teams won the high school girls and boys varsity 5-kilometer races.
The Durango girls finished first out of five schools with 21 points. Points are determined by adding up the finishing place of each team’s top five runners. Shiprock High School finished second and Kirkland Central High School finished third.
On the boys side, Durango won with 21 points while Kirkland finished second with 50 points and Farmington High School finished third with 94 points.
“It was nice,” Durango cross country head coach Michael Fadil said. “It's not a big meet. As much as I try and tell the kids to differentiate the emotional intensity in workouts and race days, it's nice to have some meets lower key. Even when they run hard, it doesn't have all that emotional energy tied up which does take a toll on the kids when they're trying to get up for every race. So it's nice to have them run up at front at this point in the season.”
Fadil said the course was about two minutes slower than a fast high school course. He said the course has a couple of big hills and some smaller rolling hills.
Durango sophomore Lacy Ruggiero won her first high school cross county race of the year, finishing the 5K race in 21 minutes and 16.30 seconds. Right behind her was eighth grader Zia Fadil, Michael Fadil’s daughter, who finished in 21:16.90.
Fadil can’t race in Colorado high school meets as an eighth grader but she can in New Mexico. Her finishing position didn’t count toward Durango’s team score since she ran unattached.
“They had fun and it was nice,” Fadil said about his daughter and Ruggiero running together. “They've trained together a lot … they like working together, like training together. It's really fun watching them. That's how we planned it and they executed.”
Fadil told his runners to treat this race like a hard workout. He wanted his kids to leave a gear so they could feel like they could run another 0.5 miles.
Demons junior Ayumi Lambert had a strong race, finishing fourth overall in 22:07.70 as the second Durango runner. Fadil has been happy to see her progress this year after dealing with injuries last year.
Behind Lambert was senior Brynn Aggeler in fifth in 22:14.30 and junior Mira Quayle in seventh, finishing in 22:33.70. Freshman Mena Cerwin finished eighth in 22:58.60 to round out the scoring positions for the Demons.
Demons freshman Caden Voss had a strong showing in the boys race, finishing second overall in 18:01.67 and as the top Demon. Senior AJ Bonanno was behind him in third in 18:14.68.
“Those are two of the kids that did a lot of training,” Fadil said about Voss and Bonanno. “There's two or three kids on the boys side that did a lot of running over the summer. Those are two of them. Caden has responded really nicely to more workouts than he was used to up to this point. You make the jump to ninth grade and a lot of things change. All the academics are harder, and social life changes. But all the training changes too. So he's adjusting really nicely to that.”
Sophomore Jack Purcell was in fourth in 18:17.29 and sophomore Rocco Enea was in fifth in 18:17.33. Sophomore Jackson Fisher had a good run, finishing seventh in 18:48.25 to round out the scoring position for Durango.
The Demons travel to Colorado Springs for the 5A Region 5 Regionals on Oct. 24.
Softball ends its season with two losses to Grand Junction Central
The end-of-the-season schedule wasn’t kind to the Durango softball team. The Demons had two games against Fruita Monument and two games against Grand Junction Central in October. Those teams have a combined record of 34-12.
Durango finished its season at home on Saturday with two losses to Grand Junction Central 9-2 and 13-1. The Demons finished the season with a 9-14 overall record and a 1-9 record in 5A/4A Southwestern League play.
“We knew going in it was going to be really tough,” Durango softball head coach Sara Clair said. “Abby Gordon pitched the first game and she did great. It was fun to watch her grow as a freshman, especially in the pitching from the beginning of the season to the end of the season.”
Gordon finished the first game with 13 hits allowed and four strikeouts.
Clair was happy to see all of her seniors get a hit in the first game. The Demons only got outhit 13-9 in that first game. She said the Demons’ execution lacked at times, especially the times when Durango had bases loaded and didn’t score.
Grand Junction Central had a 1-0 lead after the second inning and then scored two runs in each of the next four innings.
Durango senior Ellie Casias went 3-4 in the first game. Senior Karina Trujillo went 2-3 and senior Molly Best went 2-4.
The Demons started the second game up 1-0 and then one of the umpires had a major seizure which stopped the game for an hour as he got medical attention and went to the hospital. (The umpire was later released from the hospital.) After the pause, Durango gave up seven runs in the first inning. The Warriors then scored six runs in the third and the game was over after the fourth inning.
Clair said it was a traumatic experience for the girls and they couldn’t get any momentum going after the delay in play. She did say Grand Junction Central did play its best pitcher in the second game and the Demons struggled.
Durango softball doubled its win total from last year to this year and was close to making the playoffs. The Demons return both pitchers and some other key players next year.
“I was really excited for the girls to more than double our wins from last season,” Clair said. “There's a couple of doubleheaders I look back on that had we, instead of splitting, we sweep, all the sudden, we're looking at probably being in the playoffs and still probably playing right now. But with the commitment from this senior group, my underclassmen have some big shoes to fill next year.”
bkelly@durangoherald.com
