The Dove Creek volleyball team kept its season alive last weekend.
After a pigtail win over the Ouray Trojans last Wednesday, the Lady Bulldogs went 1-2 on Saturday in the Class 1A District 1 Tournament, which was good enough to qualify for the Class 1A Regional Tournament.
They were swept by North Park and Nucla, but with three of the four teams from the tourney slated to advance to regionals, the Bulldogs’ 3-1 win over De Beque sealed their postseason spot.
“We had kind of a slow start to the tournament, to be honest,” said DCHS head coach Melissa Carver. “It was early Saturday and it took us a while to get our feet moving. But then we played pretty good against De Beque and we played a pretty good game for the most part against Nucla.”
After an ugly 25-5, 25-12, 25-12 loss to the Mustangs in their last meeting the week prior, the Bulldogs kept things a bit closer on Saturday. And while they again lost in three sets, 25-9, 25-17, 25-20, Carver remained positive.
“We actually hung in for the last two sets of that game,” she said. “So that was encouraging since we play them again this weekend.”
The No. 3 seed Lady Bulldogs (11-11, 4-7 San Juan Basin League) will open the Class 1A Region E Tournament against the No. 1 seed Nucla Mustangs (20-1, 10-0 SJBL) at 1 p.m. on Friday in Nucla. Then at 2:30 p.m., they will take on the No. 2 seed Sierra Grande Panthers (17-6, 9-1 1A District 6).
There are eight regional tournaments in Class 1A, with the winner of each advancing to state. And then there will be four wildcard teams that also move on to the state tournament, which will be selected based on the CHSAA RPI Rankings published on Monday, Nov. 7 following all regional tourneys.
Dove Creek was No. 31 in the latest RPI Rankings, released Oct. 31. And while playing No. 7 ranked Nucla and No. 15 Sierra Grande will likely improve the Bulldogs’ RPI standing, it probably won’t be enough to make them one of the four teams that qualify for the state championships based on RPI.
So, their best chance to get to state is to win Friday’s regional.
“The biggest thing is just making sure we’re strong as a team unit,” Carver said looking ahead to Friday’s contests. “Staying positive with each other, building each other up, lots of communication and talking, and then working on covering our holes and points of weakness from last weekend.”