Youth is beginning to catch up to the Montezuma-Cortez High School boys soccer team. The Panthers, who with only a couple of seniors on the roster, have mainly freshman and sophomores. Basically, they are trying to play a varsity schedule with a junior varsity-type team.

Grand Junction High beat Montezuma-Cortez High School 5-1 Saturday morning, Sept. 30, after suffering its first Southwestern League loss of the season Friday, Sept. 29, to Durango in high school soccer at Norman Johnson Memorial Field.

Cortez played well for the first 10 minutes of the game. The Panthers were doing well but then problems started. The first was when goalie Dusty Bell got his bell rung and had to be replaced by Cody Beaver. Bell was okay but did not play the rest of the game.

A few minutes later, GJHS sophomore Brandon Swartzendruber scored the first of his hat trick goals to lead the Tigers (8-3 overall, 5-1 in league) with 11:09 gone.

The veteran Tigers applied good pressure and changed fields easily against the younger Panthers. At the 24-minute mark, Swatzendruber scored again when Beaver overcommitted in one direction and the ball went the other at the last second.

GJHS went up 3-0 late in the half when Jason Covington scored as the ball slipped in at the corner.

Cortez managed one shot on goal by David Schmidlap but the ball sailed wide of its mark. The Tigers took several shots and kept the ball in the attacking half of the field.

In the second half, Daniel Cherry scored for Grand Junction early in the half, again by Swatzendruber. That goal came off a prefect pass from Brady Reece. A few minutes later, the Tigers scored again with 18:09 gone in the half. This time Daniel Cherry booted the ball into the goal.

The Panthers played much better from that point on. But by that time, the most of the Tiger starters were sitting on the bench. At about the 25-minute mark, Tyler Gilstrap scored on a nice header.

The Tigers finished with 24 shots on goal while the Panthers took seven.

The Panthers "just did not show up at all against Central on Friday night," according to MCHS head coach Todd Starr. The Panthers fell 4-0.

"I was disappointed because this was a team in which we were very evenly matched with. I thought we would do much better than what we did. Nobody played at all," he added.

The Warriors scored all their goals off corner kicks.

"We woke up in the second half and played much better. They only scored one goal in the second half," he added.