Panther boys soccer makes state; first-round home game Wednesday
Montezuma-Cortez went 12-3 and unbeaten in league play to earn the No. 10 seed in the Class 3A bracket. No. 23 Delta comes to Panther Stadium at 5:30 p.m. Oct. 28.
The Montezuma-Cortez boys soccer team is in the state tournament, and its first playoff game is at home. The Colorado High School Activities Association released the Class 3A bracket Monday with the Panthers seeded No. 10 of 32, which puts their first-round game at Panther Stadium: No. 23 Delta visits at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 28.
Graphic: Cortez Current. Source: CHSAA 3A bracket; MaxPreps; Durango Herald
The Panthers finished the regular season 12-3. They went 6-0 in the 3A Intermountain League to win the league title, beating Alamosa, Pagosa Springs and Bayfield twice each and outscoring them 21-3 along the way. Over the whole season Montezuma-Cortez scored 42 goals and allowed 13. The three losses were a pair of one-goal games in August and early September, against Telluride and Fruita Monument, and a 3-0 defeat at Class 4A Grand Junction Central on Oct. 17. The regular season closed with a 6-0 win over Bayfield at home on Oct. 20.
It is a sharp turn for a program that went 3-7-3 last fall, according to The Journal’s preseason report, which described first-year head coach Jeff Yarbrough inheriting a young roster that was now a year older. Yarbrough told the Durango Herald after the Bayfield win that the program had not played a playoff game in a long time and that his team, which carries nine seniors, was “ready and raring to go.”
Delta, whose teams are also called the Panthers, arrives at 7-5-3 overall and 3-1-3 in its league, where it finished fourth, according to MaxPreps. Delta closed its regular season with a 2-2 tie at Roaring Fork on Friday. The two schools met in another sport three days ago, when Delta’s football team ended Montezuma-Cortez’s season with a 60-13 win in Delta.
Under the tournament format the higher seed hosts through the semifinals. The winner of Wednesday’s game plays Tuesday, Nov. 3, against the winner of No. 7 Lamar and No. 26 Prospect Ridge. If Lamar wins its first-round game as the higher seed, a Montezuma-Cortez win would send the Panthers to Lamar; if Prospect Ridge pulls the upset, the second round would also be in Cortez. The quarterfinals are Saturday, Nov. 7, the semifinals Wednesday, Nov. 11, and the championship Saturday, Nov. 14, at Weidner Field in Colorado Springs.
Wednesday’s game is on the Cortez Current events calendar, and the result will post to the scoreboards page when MaxPreps records it. The 5:30 p.m. kickoff is the time listed on both teams’ MaxPreps schedules; the bracket itself lists only the date.
Sources: CHSAA 2026 boys soccer brackets; Sentinel Colorado’s Class 3A bracket and schedule; MaxPreps; the Durango Herald, Oct. 23; The Journal’s preseason report.