Devils, Huskies booters win to set up Round 2
GYPSUM — Eagle Valley and Battle Mountain girls soccer took care of business on Thursday, setting up Round 2 of the rivalry on Saturday.
The Devils downed Palisade, 5-2, in convincing fashion in Gypsum, while the Huskies rolled to 8-0 win at Delta.
The two teams meet at Battle Mountain at noon on Saturday. The Huskies beat Eagle Valley, 4-1, last weekend in a game that was closer than the score indicated.
“I think the girls were super-nervous last week to play Battle Mountain,” Devils coach Stephen Baxter said. “Afterwards, there was a realization that they’re just a group of high school girls like us. Our players are looking forward to it.”
Eagle Valley needed overtime to beat the Bulldogs in Grand Junction earlier this season. Thursday was happily less stressful.
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Sofia Aguilar scored twice, with Jessie Adams, Mariel Gutierrez and Hana Berge all chipping in. And that is a season sweep for the Devils (7-2) for Palisade, something which may come in handy down the road.
Four teams from the Western Slope region will qualify for the state playoffs. The region is a combination of the Western Slope League proper and the 4A teams which compete in the 5A/4A Southwest League, Montrose (5-1), Durango (1-5), Montezuma-Cortez (0-4) and Grand Junction Central (1-4). For the purposes of qualification, all games count, conference or nonconference.
With the disclaimer that all scores may not yet be reported to maxpreps.com and that there is a lot of soccer left, it looks like the Western Slope League might get three spots in the postseason. That would mean that Battle Mountain (8-0, 24 points), Eagle Valley (7-2, 21), Steamboat (6-2, 18, with an unreported score against Summit County on Thursday, so more likely 7-2, 21) and Montrose (5-1, 17) as the four teams with Palisade (4-3, 12) temporarily out of the picture.
For the mathematically astute, Montrose’s five wins add up to 17 points because the Indians get four points for wins against 5A opponents Fruita Monument and Grand Junction.
“We’re trying not to focus on that,” Baxter said. “We want to finish out the season strong as a unit. However the cards fall at the end of the season, if they take us, we’d be honored.”
Lacrosse
Huskies fall to Valor
COLORADO SPRINGS — OK, Battle Mountain boys lacrosse can play with the best.
The No. 3-ranked Huskies fell at No. 1 Valor Christian, 10-9, on Thursday.
Maybe, the Huskies and Eagles will meet again.
“We knew going into this game that it was going to be close,” Battle Mountain coach Jerry Nichols said. “In any game with teams from the (CHSAA) top 10, it’s going to be like this. We saw that against (Alexander) Dawson. We saw that today.”
The Huskies are 2-1 this season against teams in the top 10, and they get another helping of high-level lacrosse on Saturday when defending state champion Ponderosa comes to town at 5 p.m.
The Huskies MVP for this game was goalie Max Schramm, who stood on his head on Thursday.
Clayton Davis had four for Battle Mountain (5-1), while Wyatt Dilling and Tony Clark ripped the twine twice. Jeremy Sforzo had his second goal in as many games.
Sports Editor Chris Freud can be reached at 970-748-2934, cfreud@vaildaily.com and @cfreud.
