Mancos football opens the 8-man playoffs against Stratton
Sunday's seeding meeting put the Bluejays in the state bracket as the No. 7 seed at 6-2. They meet No. 10 Stratton at 1 p.m. Saturday, at a site the association has not yet named.
Mancos football is in the state playoffs. The Colorado High School Activities Association held its football seeding meeting on Sunday, and the 8-man bracket it released puts the Bluejays in as the No. 7 seed against No. 10 Stratton at 1 p.m. on Saturday, November 7.
Graphic: Cortez Current. Source: CHSAA 8-man state bracket; the Cortez Current scoreboards feed, which draws on MaxPreps
The Bluejays finished the regular season at six wins and two losses, and two wins and one loss in the San Juan Basin League. Their two defeats were a 37-6 loss to Simla on September 12 and a 24-22 loss to Norwood on October 16, the last game of the regular season. Stratton comes in at six wins and three losses.
Norwood, the league team that beat Mancos, is also in the bracket, seeded sixth and drawn against No. 11 Front Range Christian at the same hour on Saturday. The two could not meet again before the semifinals.
Where it will be played
The association’s bracket does not say. For most of the sixteen first-round games the site field is blank or carries a label rather than an address; the Mancos game’s reads “Round 1 of Colorado 8-man play-offs.” Only one first-round game in the class, Hayden against Crowley County, has a venue printed against it.
The Current’s scoreboards feed records the game as neither home nor away, and the Mancos page on MaxPreps labels it “Neutral.” Three readings, none of them naming a school, is not a venue, so the Current has not put the game on its events calendar and is not telling anyone where to drive. In 8-man football the higher seed usually hosts through the semifinals, and Mancos is the higher seed — but that is a general practice, not a published decision about this game. Anyone planning to go should check with the school first.
What is beyond it
The winner goes into the quarterfinals on Friday, November 13, against whichever of No. 2 Sedgwick County and No. 15 Vail Christian comes through their game on Friday, November 6. The semifinals follow on November 20 and 21 and the 8-man state championship is set for 5 p.m. on Friday, November 27.
Mancos’s football season had looked finished when the Current reported the week on Sunday morning; the bracket had not been released then, and that story has been corrected.
The bracket is on CHSAA’s site, and the Bluejays’ records were counted game by game from the Current’s scoreboards feed, which draws on the Mancos pages on MaxPreps.