For the Montezuma–Cortez High School baseball team, the final two games were a microcosm of a season that featured plenty of highlights, but only six wins.
“It was good to be together one last time,” said M–CHS senior Randy Haley. “We played well as a team even though our wins and losses didn’t really show our efforts.”
M–CHS opened the weekend on May 1 against Montrose and after leading in the early innings, lost 5–4.
Andrew Laymon started the game on the mound for the Panthers and pitched into the 7th inning before being relieved by Konnar McGee with the game tied, 5–5. McGee faced one batter and surrendered a walk off hit.
“I felt like we came together and we were competitive,” said Haley, when asked about the contest. “We had a couple of errors, but we fought through them and stayed in it.”
Playing their second game of the weekend against Grand Junction High School on May 2, the Panthers lost, 15–1.
Grand Junction scored five runs off of M–CHS starting pitcher Dayne Black in the bottom of the 4th inning before adding seven more runs in the bottom of the 3rd inning to take a 12–0 lead.
Although M–CHS fought back with a run of its own in the top of the 4th inning, the effort was not enough and the game ended after five innings of play.
“We had a lot of errors, but we didn’t get over them,” said M–CHS first baseman Bridger Brenner. “We dwelled on them and that hurt us.”
With the loss, ended its season with a 6–13 record.
“I’ll remember all of the games that we played together in the summer and in high school,” said Brenner. “Our team got along well. We had a great group.”