With several members of its roster missing due to spring break, the Montezuma-Cortez High School girls’ soccer team did the best it could.
Only eleven players present on Friday and ten players present on Saturday however, the Lady Panthers lost to Montrose High School and Grand Junction High School to fall to 2-7-0 on the season.
“It’s hard because it’s spring break and I know families have plans, but we need to have our girls here,” said M-CHS head coach Sean Fitzgerald. “It’s not good.”
M-CHS falls to Montrose
Opening against Montrose on April 3, M-CHS struggled from start to finish in route to a 5-1 defeat. M-CHS players appeared exhausted throughout the contest as passes missed their marks and shots were few and far between.
“It was sloppy,” said Fitzgerald after the contest. “We’re not playing nearly as well as we should be playing at this point in the season.”
Montrose sophomore Megan Parker scored three goals in the game, the first of which came early in the first half when M-CHS goalie Elizabeth Loschert mishandled a pass from Gabriella Wolf and Parker chipped the ball into a wide open net.
Montrose senior Shelby Kenney scored on a 35-yard free kick later in the first half, which expired with the Lady Panthers trailing 2-0.
“The first half, we had some amazing passes and runs, but we just couldn’t finish,” said M-CHS sophomore Maddy Mahaffey.
Montrose added three second half goals to move ahead 5-0 with roughly 20 minutes left in the game.
After Montrose removed the majority of its starters, Wolf scored the Lady Panthers only goal of the contest when she dribbled through traffic and fired a long shot into the bottom portion of the net.
“I feel like we did pretty well, but our talking started to fall apart a little bit,” said M-CHS junior Stevvee Brenner. “At the end, we picked it up and started to play really well as a team.”
M-CHS loses to Grand Junction
Playing its second game of the weekend on April 4, M-CHS remained somewhat competitive throughout a 3-1 loss to Grand Junction High School.
“We played as a team today and we showed what we can do,” said Fitzgerald. “We were unlucky on a couple of bounces for their goals. We’re making huge strides and we just need to go forward and not back now.”
Grand Junction sophomore Lucy Raaum scored all three of her team’s goals, including two in the first half, which made the score 2-0.
Wolf scored M-CHS’s lone goal in the game’s 31st minute after receiving a pass from Cassidy Leonard and blasting a hard shot that curved from the right side of the box into the top left corner of the net.
“It was a great pass from Cassidy and the two girls weren’t talking,” Wolf said. “I just hammered it in there.”
Wolf went on to praise the Lady Panthers resiliency, noting that the team appears to be making progress.
“We settled down and played to feet,” Wolf said. “The new girls played phenomenal. They are getting it.”
Next up for the Lady Panthers will be road matchup against Durango on April 9.