Full strength. Finally.
After a half season of piecemeal play, the Durango High School girls lacrosse team at last has rounded up its hockey players, its sick and injured and even last year’s leading scorer.
After giving birth to her son Terran in mid-Feburary, junior Jessie Ransford hopes to add her offensive talents to the Demons in her first home games of the year – first against Mountain League leader Grand Junction at 4 p.m. today, then in a rematch at 10 a.m. Saturday, both at DHS Stadium.
The boys follow with a 1:30 p.m. game against Santa Fe Prep at DHS on Saturday.
After eight games without a full compliment, Haley Dallas is just glad to be back at full strength – one unit.
“One of the things I really like about our team is at the end of the game, we don’t have one girl with eight goals,” the midfielder said. “We have every girl scoring two or three.”
Ransford – even though she couldn’t play, she’s been “at almost every practice,” DHS head coach Jenni Darlow said – was one of those girls in her first games back last weekend in Denver. She scored nine goals in three games, adding another weapon to an already multifaceted, if sometimes tentative, DHS attack.
“She’s already added scoring, so that’s nice,” said midfielder Sara Martin.
“Sometimes I worry our offense, they look like the don’t want to score,” said. “I always know Jessie wants to score.”
But while scoring ends up in the statistics columns, Darlow said some of the most important elements of the DHS team aren’t often readily visible.
“Sara (Martin) and I are the ghosts of the team,” Dallas said.
But they provide the intangibles that make it possible for girls such as Ransford or Alyssa Montoya or Tymbree Hawkins or the rest to find their way into the stats.
For her part, Martin provides the speed and stick skills in the middle to move the ball from defense to offense and put it on the attackers’ sticks. Against the speedy Grand Junction Tigers, that will come in handy.
“It’s like my favorite game to play,” Martin said.
Dallas, meanwhile, is the draw-control queen.
“The thing Darlow puts me in for is to get the draw,” Dallas said.
That was particularly noticeable last weekend in Denver, Darlow said, when Dallas had to miss part of a game with an injury.
“We didn’t win any draws after she left the game,” Darlow said.
Both of those are critical pieces to allowing Ransford and the rest of the DHS attackers to break out this weekend against the single-loss Grand Junction squad.
“I expect them to have their stuff down,” Darlow said. “They’re not going to give anything to us. And that’s fine.
After a couple of close losses to tough teams to start the season, the Demons (3-5 overall, 2-3 ML) have something to prove.
But Ransford?
“I don’t have to prove myself to anybody,” she said. “I just want to set good examples for Terran as he gets older, and I love lacrosse so I want to keep playing.”
jsojourner@durangoherald.com
DHS boys, FLC women also will play at home
Durango Demons lacrosse ran the Mountain League gauntlet its first six games of its conference season.
Before that, the boys lacrosse team opened with a victory over Santa Fe Prep.
Now that the Aspens, Battle Mountains, Fruita Monuments, Grand Junctions, Steamboat Springs and Summits are out of the way, Durango High School has come full circle.
DHS (4-6, 2-6 Mountain League) will host Santa Fe Prep – DHS shut out Santa Fe Prep 12-0 in its season opener – at 1:30 p.m. Saturday at DHS Stadium. And with five games left on their regular-season schedule, the Demons are five games away from reaching a goal they set more than two weeks ago before their first conference victory against Pueblo West: win out.
“Go out on fire every single game,” Demons’ captain Cooper Stowers said then. “I think what our team has experienced these last couple weeks is a lot of struggle, and I think that’s adding up to a lot of fire.”
Durango has won three in a row since its early 0-6 run through the toughest of the tough in the Mountain League.
Four out of the Demons’ final five games are home games, starting with a pair of games against New Mexico schools they’ve beaten by an aggregate 32-3. DHS will host Sandia Prep (Albuquerque) on April 27, a team it beat its last time out 20-3 – “a pretty dominant performance,” DHS head coach John Robinette said.
Fort Lewis College
After its long learning experience through the Midwest – from Lebanon, Ill., to St. Charles, Mo., to Colorado Springs – the Fort Lewis College women’s lacrosse team has come home.
FLC (5-7, 4-4 Western Intercollegiate Lacrosse Association) will host Adams State at 2 p.m. Saturday at Ray Dennison Memorial Field, then will host Colorado Mesa on April 26 to finish its home slate.
FLC will finish its regular season on the road vs. Dallas on April 28 in Colorado Springs.
FLC went 1-3 on its Midwest swing, defeating McKendree 18-7, then losing to league-leading Lindenwood 19-8. FLC returned to Colorado with an 11-8 loss to Colorado College on April 13.
FLC has lost four of its last five games, including its last two home games.
In its only other matchup this season, FLC – third in the WILA – defeated Adams State 10-4 on March 2 in Alamosa.
heraldsports@ durangoherald.com
