After finishing second at the 4A state championship last May, the Durango High School girls golf team is ready to return to that stage again without some key pieces.
Last season, the Demons came up 13 strokes short at the state championship, and they wouldn’t have gotten there without seniors Ellie White and Ramiee Brant.
White was the player of the year in the Southwestern League. She was almost always shooting in the high 70s, low 80s and had wins and plenty of top 10 finishes for the Demons over her four-year career. She’s now playing golf at Fort Lewis College. As a senior, Brant had her moments when she was the best player at a tournament and was a key part of Durango’s top four the past two years.
However, the Demons should have the ability to have another strong season thanks to junior Dylan Livingston, senior Jayden Craig and some players ready to step up.
“I’m feeling pretty optimistic,” Durango girls golf head coach Kirk Rawles said. “We have Jayden and Dylan coming back, and they were pretty key in how we did last year. Riley Harms will be back, and she got a lot of tournaments in last year. With those three, we have a pretty good core to build from.”
Livingston has a ton of potential to go with the production she showed last year. At 6-feet tall, she has a lot of power off the tee and with her irons. Livingston also showed nice touch around the green last year. She showed she can shoot low with a 5-over par performance at Montrose last season. Livingston finished tied-19th at state last year.
Consistency will be the key for Livingston to level up this year, according to Rawles. If she can grind out decent scores when she’s not having her best day, it’ll really help her average and her standing in the state.
Craig was also fantastic last season. She won the Girls 4A Region 4 Regional last season and finished 16th at state last season.
“In the summer, she played quite a bit up at Hillcrest in the women's league each week,” Rawles said about Craig. “She texted me a picture of her scorecard because she shot 73 or 74, so she's broken that 80 barrier a couple times this last summer … Going into this year from last year, she was one of our most consistent across the board … She put the time in last summer that she won't be scared to break 80.”
Rawles expects senior Riley Harms to step into the top four after improving a lot last season and gaining a lot of tournament experience.
Durango has around 25 girls on the team this season, with a lot of those girls having been in the program for a few years. Rawles thinks Kierstin Maycock, Emmi Stewart, Scarlett Ramsey, Kailen Noonan and Clio Bendell are players who could step up and compete in tournaments this year for the Demons.
The Demons began practice on Feb. 23 and have been outside for nearly all the practices with the warm winter in Durango. They’ll begin the season on Monday at the 2026 Chipeta Kick Off Classic at the Chipeta Golf Course in Grand Junction. It’s a great course to begin the season since it’s basically a par 3 course.
Luckily for Durango fans this year, the 4A state championship will be at The Bridges in Montrose. There will be no regionals. In the past, teams would go to regionals and would qualify for state depending on how they did there. This year, regionals were scrapped. Players and teams qualified based on how they did in the regular-season tournaments. The top 84 players advance to state this year. Each team gets to bring four players inside the top 84. Any other player inside the top 84 doesn’t get to go.
Durango fans will get to see the Demons in action at home on April 27 at Hillcrest Golf Club.
“Hopefully, with a good rotation and trying to get opportunities for the rest of those girls that I mentioned, hopefully they can get in the top 84 and, we could take whole team to state,” Rawles said.
bkelly@durangoherald.com
