{"id":137349,"date":"2026-07-02T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/montezuma-cortez-graduate-receives-roy-halladay-award-prior-to-entering-u-s-naval-academy\/"},"modified":"2026-07-02T05:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T11:00:00","slug":"montezuma-cortez-graduate-receives-roy-halladay-award-prior-to-entering-u-s-naval-academy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/montezuma-cortez-graduate-receives-roy-halladay-award-prior-to-entering-u-s-naval-academy\/","title":{"rendered":"Montezuma-Cortez graduate receives Roy Halladay award prior to entering U.S. Naval Academy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Cory
Cory Carver received the award in June, prior to starting at the U.S. Naval Academy. There, he will play DI baseball. (Erika Alvero\/Special to The Journal)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Montezuma-Cortez High School Class of 2026 graduate Cory Dean Carver was named the second ever recipient of The<\/em> Denver<\/em> Post\u2019s<\/em> Roy Halladay award before he entered the U.S. Naval Academy in June.<\/p>\n

Carver was appointed to the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, where he will play baseball at the Division I level. Carver\u2019s love of baseball runs deep from years on the field and volunteering as a youth baseball coach. He missed his own commencement to play at the state championship in May.<\/p>\n

In an interview with 9News<\/a>, Carver, who plays shortstop, said he volunteered to help grow and promote the sport along with other life values.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to inspire kids to be like how I was on the baseball field, but I also want to inspire people to be diligent, be hard-working and get after it every day,\u201d Carver said.<\/p>\n

\"Cory
Cory Carver was named to the 3A First Team this year. (Courtesy of Jennifer Boniface)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The award is presented to a baseball senior who exemplifies academic excellence, character, integrity, leadership and service. Players must be nominated by their coach or athletic director. Last year, there were 20 nominees.<\/p>\n

Halladay, the award\u2019s namesake, graduated from Arvada High School in the early 1990s and was known as \u201cone of the top baseball prospects to ever come out of Colorado,\u201d according to the award website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to congratulate you, Cory, for a lot of reasons,\u201d Ed Henderson, award chairman of communications said<\/a> during an award presentation. \u201cOutstanding performance on the field, outstanding performance in the classroom and, equally important, your citizenship, character and integrity.\u201d<\/p>\n

During Carver\u2019s senior year, he was selected to the 3A<\/a> First<\/a> Team<\/a>. The Panthers also won<\/a> their fourth straight Intermountain League title and advanced to the state championships as the No. 3 seed in 3A. They ended their state run in seventh place after losses to D\u2019Evelyn and Elizabeth, according to MaxPreps<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Carver\u2019s batting average was .580 during his final year as a Panther, with seven home runs and 21 stolen bases.<\/p>\n

Carver\u2019s coach Jake Huff did not immediately respond to The<\/em> Journal\u2019s<\/em> request for comment.<\/p>\n

bduran@the-journal.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Senior and baseball player recognized for academics, athletics, leadership and service<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":137350,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6313],"tags":[470,21,28,60,36,29,6419],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-137349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports-2","tag-baseball","tag-cortez","tag-headlines","tag-montezuma-county","tag-montezuma-cortez-high-school","tag-newsletter","tag-tj-trueanthem"],"acf":[],"author_name":"Website Administrator","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137349\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137349"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=137349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}