Mancos football falls to Stratton in the playoff opener
The Bluejays lost 36-38 on Saturday in the first round of the 8-man state playoffs, two points from a quarterfinal. They finish the year at six wins and three losses.
Mancos football’s season ended Saturday afternoon, two points short. The Bluejays lost 36-38 to Stratton in the first round of the Colorado 8-man state playoffs, the game the Current previewed last Sunday after the seeding meeting.
It was a far tighter game than the seeding suggested, and an unusually open one. Mancos’s 36 points were its fourth-highest total of the season, and only once before this year, in a 62-12 win over St. Mary’s in September, had a Bluejays game produced as many points as Saturday’s 74.
Mancos finishes at six wins and three losses, second in the San Juan Basin League at two and one. Stratton moves on at seven and three.
Two points is a margin the Bluejays know well. Saturday’s defeat and the 22-24 loss to Norwood that closed the regular season were both by exactly two, and the only other team to beat Mancos all year, Simla in September, is also the only one that beat them by more than a touchdown.
Where it was played
MaxPreps records the game as a Mancos home game, and the Current’s scoreboards feed, which draws on MaxPreps, agrees. Mancos plays its home games at Mancos High School. On the day of Sunday’s preview the same page had labeled it “Neutral,” which is why that story could not tell readers where to go.
The state association’s bracket still prints no site for the game: its site field reads “Round 1 of Colorado 8-man play-offs” rather than an address. In the 8-man postseason the higher seed often hosts, but not always, so a playoff game is not a home game until a source says it is.
The rest of the bracket
Stratton goes to the quarterfinals on Friday, November 13 against No. 2 Sedgwick County, which beat No. 15 Vail Christian 48-14 on Friday night in the only first-round game not played on Saturday.
The result and the season records were read from the Current’s scoreboards feed, which draws on the Mancos pages on MaxPreps. The bracket is on CHSAA’s site.
Update, November 7, 2026: this story originally said no source had named a site for the game. MaxPreps records it as a Mancos home game, and Mancos plays its home games at Mancos High School; the section above now says so, and says what it rests on.