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Oct. 19, 2000 BY JIM THOMAS By virtue of a one-point differential between Montrose and Montezuma-Cortez high school boys varsity soccer teams, the Panthers earn the nod to advance into the Class 4A State Soccer Tournament. According to CHSAA rules, if the Panthers beat a 5A school they are awarded 3 points. If they beat a 4A school they are awarded 2 points. The Panthers’ 2-1 win over Fruita-Monument on Oct. 6 put Cortez into the playoffs. Cortez had tied Montrose on Sept. 9 and lost to the Indians 1-2 on Oct. 10. Montrose beat Cortez, a 4A school, but lost to all the 5A ones. Thus Cortez, despite a 2-1-11 mark, wins the points 3-2 and goes to the playoffs. Cortez will host Berthoud in the first-round match set for 11 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 21, at Panther Field (NOT Norman Johnson Memorial Field where the games have been played all season). MCHS Activities Director Mike Allison made the announcement Wednesday, Oct. 18, morning. No passes will be honored. The entry fee is $5 for adults and $4 for students, according to the Colorado High School Activities Association. "I really don’t know anything about them," first-year MCHS head coach Todd Starr said Wednesday morning on learning his team had made the playoffs. "I will get on the Internet and do some calling around to find out more about them." The last time Cortez advanced into the soccer playoffs was a home match against Gunnison five years ago when it lost on a penalty kick 1-0. The Panthers lost 0-5 to Piedra Vista (Farmington) on Tuesday afternoon, Oct. 17, the final regular-season game. They also fell 0-7 to Grand Junction High last Friday, Oct. 13, and lost 2-3 to Central of Grand Junction on Saturday, Oct. 14. "We just plain got blown out by Piedra Vista. They are good. They are ranked no. 4 in New Mexico (Class 4A). I experimented with my lineup and put the seniors up front just to let them have fun. Probably, we might have been able to have held them to 2 or 3 points if we had not done that," Starr said. Starr said he found encouragement in the final days of the season. Starr said he was upbeat and encouraged despite the Panthers dropping three straight to close the season. Against Grand Junction it certainly looked like a blow-out anyway possible. However, Starr reviewed the loss. "All but one of their goals came in the first half. And in the second half I played all of the freshmen and one or two sophomores and we controlled 85 percent of the final half," he said. Starr cited the play of freshmen Ian Cain and Bill Anderegg. Against Central the Panthers fell behind early but continued to play hard. Cain kept the ball and frosh David Schmidlap played a "spectacular head ball into the back of the net to tie the game at 1-1 just before the half. Early in the second half, sophomore Jon Cullington gave the Panthers a 2-1 advantage when he scored by playing a ball that hit his chin. The lead, however, didn’t last long as the Warriors tied it up 2-2. The officiating suddenly got strange, Starr claimed. First, Central had taken a throw in and when the ball boy threw an extra ball on the field Central was awarded a free kick rather than simply re-throwing the ball. Central made the most of it by putting the ball in the back of the net. Then with less than five minutes left, Cullington apparently scored off a corner kick when the force of the kick pushed the Central goalie back into the net. The head referee overruled the no-call by the linesman and ruled the ball had gone out-of-bounds prior to swerving back into the field of play and then changed directions and headed towards the goal. So, there was no goal after all. "It defies the laws of physics for that ball to do what they claimed happened. It would have had to make the path of ‘S’. Still, as I told the players, we have to play our game as not to be in a position to have someone else make those decisions — life just isn’t fair," he told the players. |
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