Sophomore goalkeeper Chase York’s incredible diving catch of Bayfield senior Ayden Casillas’ 70th-minute rocket to his right was an indicator that visiting Montezuma-Cortez, trailing 2-1, still had fuel to burn during Monday night’s match.
Fortunately for the home side, Wolverine goalie Orion Botsford correctly interpreted such a signal. Bayfield held on for a 2-1 victory.
After Casillas went down in the 77th with, much to BHS backers’ horror, an apparent knee injury, the opposing Panthers were able to play one last ball into Bayfield’s 18-yard box. But Botsford, playing his final home match along with fellow seniors Casillas, Zach Hufnagel, Brayden Hoffman, Wyatt Larson, Tauer and Cade Crotty, Lane Hunter and Riley Hanson, took no chances clearing the intrusion out with his foot; instead, he slid toward and smothered the problem.
“That was last-minute and we can’t afford to get scored on like that like that first-half goal,” Botsford said. “So we held strong in that second half and kept them to one.”
Despite going scoreless for the last 36 minutes of regulation, the Wolverines kept their 3A Intermountain title hopes alive by outlasting M-CHS inside Wolverine Country Stadium by the aforementioned one-goal margin.
“I’ll be sore tomorrow but I’ll be good,” said Casillas. “Thought I tore my ACL for a second; knee went a little limp. But that’s crazy … it’s over; this was the last game we’re all going to ever play on this field again. It’s going to be sad in a few minutes when I’m in my car alone and it hits me.”
Hitting the ball fiercely from 30 yards out just nine minutes into the contest, Casillas nearly put Bayfield (6-7 overall, 3-1 IML) up early but York, already into his work, yanked the shot down and secured it tightly. Moving forward into BHS’ attack, Hunter then tried for the icebreaker, but clanged his 13th-minute shot off York’s crossbar.
Not long after entering the fray as a substitute, sophomore Reid Hoffman finally got the Wolverines on the scoreboard in the 28th minute. Casillas lifted what was about a 25-yard free kick from the elbow of the Panthers’ 18 to York’s right, and found freshman Diego Cuddie, who’d also initially checked in from off head coach Cody Kiss’ bench, who rolled a low shot back toward York’s right. The attempt went wide, but Tauer Crotty managed to keep the ball in play.
Nearly able to put a shot underneath M-CHS senior Nicholas Abate, Crotty then pursued the deflection as it went across York’s field of vision toward his left. Crotty’s follow-up chance never made it to York, but was blocked backward to Hoffman. Capitalizing upon the chaos, Hoffman then shot the ball into the net.
Montezuma-Cortez (2-6-3 overall, 0-3-1 IML), however, equalized in the 38th when freshman Landon Yarbrough was able to gain control of sophomore Degan Lake’s free kick taken from some 30 yards out and angled toward Botsford’s right. Charging toward the back post, Yarbrough then not only beat nearby teammate Donald Marshall to the ball but also Botsford, and the score would remain 1-1 entering halftime after 40 completed minutes.
“We were disturbed because we all thought it was offsides,” recalled Botsford. “After that, we just had to keep our heads up and play to our potential like we were right before it. Something came out of it; the second half we were able to reset, got back into our mindset and started playing passes how we wanted to.”
A perfect Casillas right-to-left cross paralleling M-CHS’ 18 yielded junior Julian Polanco’s 44th-minute strike, which ultimately held up as the match-winner.
“We talked about it at halftime, talked about just driving down the side and pulling it right back to the 18 and banging it in,” Casillas explained. “And we did exactly that.”
Larson nearly added an insurance goal in the 64th, or two minutes after Polanco left the pitch after being shaken up, but hit York’s crossbar, adding to the drama.
M-CHS will next see action on Oct. 16, at home against Alamosa. Bayfield, meanwhile, will resume work on the 14th at Pagosa Springs with the league title likely at stake. Should PSHS (9-1-0, 4-0-0 IML as of 10/7) win on Friday against AHS, the Wolverines would then need to defeat the Pirates – and by more than a goal, to gain the head-to-head scoring differential advantage – and also win their Oct. 24 regular-season finale at M-CHS to clinch the crown.
