NEXT STOP: CADWELL PARK
JEREMY WALTNER – PUBLISHER
They play each other every Fourth of July in Menno, often square off in the District 6 Amateur Baseball Tournament, and now two old South Central League rivals find themselves in the same place yet again — this time in Mitchell.
Town teams from Freeman and Menno have both advanced through district play and will compete in the opening round of the 2022 Class B State Amateur Baseball Tournament this week at Cadwell Park. The Blacksox will play Lake Norden Saturday, Aug. 6 at 5:30 p.m. while the Mad Frogs will face Flandreau Sunday, Aug. 7 at 11 a.m. in the 32-team, single-elimination tournament. Both will be the home team.
Jake Weier, who has been around baseball his entire life and has been the player/manager for the Blacksox since 2018, says it’s nice to see his ballfield counterparts find success.
“I’ve got a lot of friends on the Menno team — I’ve got a lot of friends on the Lesterville team,” he said, “When you’ve been around the game for this many years, you get to know a lot of the guys pretty well. Menno played Lesterville really close during the year and I knew they were going to come ready to play.”
While the end result was the same, Freeman and Menno took different paths in qualifying for state at the District 6 tournament held at Merchants State Bank Field in Freeman late last month.
The No. 3 Blacksox downed No. 6 Menno 3-1 in the opening round on July 22, and two nights later outlasted No. 4 Tabor 11-9 in a wild game that, not only advanced them to the championship game, but also punched their ticket to Mitchell.
The Mad Frogs, meanwhile, had to come back from the loss to Freeman and survive an elimination game against No. 1 Lesterville on July 28 and ended up winning a thriller of their own, taking down the Broncs 5-4 in 11 innings.
“It felt awesome, just because we’ve come up short so many other times this year,” said Caleb Preszler, the player/manager for the Mad Frogs who didn’t see his team pick up a win until the third week of June. “All season long it seemed like things just didn’t go our way. And to come into districts as the last seed, lose to Freeman in a close game (3-1 on July 22) and then to knock off the top seed, it does feel good.”
The Broncs, who had lost to No. 4 Wynot in the semifinals last Sunday, tied the game at 4-4 in the bottom of the eighth and had a threat to win the game with two runners on and nobody out in the bottom of the 10th but Doug Hall got out of the game.
Then, in the top of the 11th, leadoff man Dylan Lehr drew a walk and Spencer Schulz connected for a go-ahead RBI double that made it 5-4. And in the bottom of the 11th, Hall once again pitched out of tough situation — this time a bases loaded, one-out jam. The veteran picked up the win when he got the last two men of the night to hit into groundouts.
“It was great to see Doug come in and do his thing,” said Preszler. “The game was as exciting as it sounds.”
As for the Blacksox and their quest for a district championship, quiet bats proved costly.
The Expos won Saturday night on the shoulders of pitcher Peyton Wieseler, whose complete game included eight strikeouts without a walk. He was also backed by stellar defense; the Expos did not commit an error while making tough plays in the field.
Freeman, meanwhile, managed just five hits and didn’t have a baserunner in the sixth, seventh or eighth innings, and a home run by Owen Feser in the bottom of the ninth was Freeman’s first hit since the fifth inning.
Still, Weier was proud of his young team’s effort, not just in districts, but throughout the season.
“Can’t say enough about how well we battled; we just kept hitting the ball well and making the plays we needed to make,” he said. “We played from behind a lot this year and were competitive, and that says a lot about this team and their mental attitude.”
And Weier reflected on how outstanding the District 6 Tournament was.
“It was great baseball all around,” he said, noting that Tabor’s 11-6 win over Crofton was the largest spread of the seven games. “Everybody was in it.”
