Dove Creek falls to Nucla 15-6 in playoff rematch

Kycen Gritz gave Dove Creek a bright spot in its final postseason game, going 3-for-4 with two runs, a stolen base and a double, but Nucla’s offense still powered a 15-6 win that sent the Bulldogs home from Class 1A District 1 play.

The matchup on Sunday, May 3, came in the 2026 CHSAA District & Regional Baseball Tournaments and felt like the latest chapter in a rivalry both sides already knew well. Dove Creek entered at 7-12 and Nucla at 10-9, and the teams had split their recent stretch with very different results: Dove Creek’s 7-4 win earlier in the season was answered by Nucla victories of 9-3 and 12-3. By the time they met again, there was little mystery left about who was seeing whom.

That familiarity did not make the result easier for the Bulldogs. Nucla controlled the game long enough to build an offense that Dove Creek could not match, and the Mustangs kept applying pressure after the first few innings. For a small Dolores County program, the loss landed harder because it closed the book on a postseason run that had already carried added meaning after Dove Creek’s playoff win over La Veta two days earlier.

Gritz, a freshman in the class of 2029 who also plays basketball and football for Dove Creek, stood out even as the scoreboard tilted the other way. MaxPreps showed a striking split around his production: the Bulldogs were 7-1 when he scored at least two runs and 0-12 when he did not. That kind of stat says as much about a young player’s growing importance as it does about the lineup around him.

Nucla arrived with momentum, too. A district preview had the Mustangs beating Sierra Grande 18-2 in regular-season play, and a later regional preview noted that Nucla and Dove Creek had met four times in 10 days, with Nucla winning two of the previous three. That context made the playoff rematch look less like a one-off and more like the final turn in a fast-moving bracket.

For Dove Creek, the season ended without another game on the schedule, but the run still mattered. The Bulldogs gave families, seniors and younger players one more stretch of spring baseball to follow, and Gritz’s line at the plate provided the kind of detail that sticks in a town like Dove Creek long after the final out.