Draw does the trick for Vail Mountain School

EAST VAIL — The Vail Mountain School and Basalt played to a 1-1 draw and everyone left East Vail happy on Tuesday.

Kind of rare for a draw, but it gave the Gore Rangers gents their first league title since 1990, while the Longhorns are also postseason bound after an 0-5 start to the season.

“It feels so great, so amazing,” Vail Mountain senior Dylan Cunningham said. “After an amazing season, it’s just an awesome feeling.”

“It’s a league title and these kids have worked so hard,” VMS coach Pete Petrovski said. “I couldn’t be more proud of them. They’ve worked so hard for it. These seniors, I couldn’t be happier for them. They’ve worked so hard since we’ve got them. They hadn’t won much prior to that. The commitment, the leadership they’ve shown — we couldn’t do it without them.”

The tie secured Vail Mountain its first league crown since the days of the old Northwestern League in 1990 and the school’s second in a calendar year after the girls also won the Slope last spring.

Meanwhile, the Longhorns are happy to take second in the league after a 6-10 campaign a year ago.

“I think they should be proud of what they did,” Basalt coach Brent Hayes said. “We had a terrible start to the season. It was not what we hoped, but I always had faith that they could play like this. To come out and play like this against a team that hasn’t lost since their first game of the year, to climb from 0-5, they have every right to be proud.”

Seeding thoughts

Kevin Garcia struck early with a rocket of a free kick in the sixth minute. In the 66th, Caleb Rewinkle completed a fantastic pass to Matt Anderson for the equalizer.

Both teams had chances in extra time.

“I think that was worthy game for a league-championship game,” Hayes said.

Basalt finishes at 8-5-2 overall and 6-0-2 in the Slope, and, after that 0-5 start, is unbeaten in its last 10 contests. (The draws were Vail Mountain and Coal Ridge, both squads headed to the postseason.)

Meanwhile, the Gore Rangers (13-1-1, 7-0-1) should be at home, at least for the first two rounds of the playoffs. VMS is ranked No. 2 in the state in the CHSAA poll, which is non-binding for postseason selection, and fourth in the maxpreps.com rankings, which do go into the seeding process.

The top eight teams in the state host the first two rounds of the playoffs Oct. 30-31, so that seems a safe bet for the Gore Rangers. (VMS hosted last year with an 11-3-1 regular season after finishing second in the league.)

The big question is whether the Gore Rangers can crack the top four, and be home, provided they advance, for the quarterfinals.

Orange time

Regardless of seed, it’s time for VMS to crack out the orange, which this team has been thinking about since being eliminated by Denver Christian in the quarterfinals last year.

“I was looking up at those guys and now my younger brother is looking up at me,” said Cunningham, who has attended VMS since he was in the first grade and knows the tradition of the postseason.

Young master Declan Cunningham, a second-grader, now gets to do the same.

Tuesday was also Senior Day for VMS. John Linn, Jon Thomas Singleton, Hoanen Chen, J.P. Elmblad, Nick Whiteford, Dylan Cunningham and Kevin Hernandez all took their bows.

VMS and Basalt will be on chsaa.org on Sunday, madly pressing the refresh button to find out their postseason draw.

Sports Editor Chris Freud can be reached at 970-748-2934 and cfreud@vaildaily.com. Follow Freud on the Twitter machine @cfreud.