It was another great week for the Minnesota Twins as they won five straight games, including a trio of high-scoring outbursts against the error-prone Seattle Mariners. Seattle won 7-4 on Sunday, putting the brakes on the win streak, but the Twins were 30-16 (.652) prior to Monday night’s game in Los Angeles against the Angels. Saturday night, the Twins hit six home runs in a one-sided 18-4 victory over the Mariners.
In high school baseball action last week, Heron Lake-Okabena / Fulda claimed a 5-0 victory over Edgerton / Southwest Minnesota Christian (a makeup game at Heron Lake on Thursday, the 16th). It was the second one-hit shutout of the spring for Coyote sophomore left-hander Eli Fest, who also blanked league champion Mountain Lake Area / Comfrey (a 2-0 HL-O / Fulda victory) at Mountain Lake back on April 16. The 16th of the month must be the right day for Fest, who has also done well in both football and basketball in varsity competition the past two school years.
If the Flying Dutchmen had been able to win at Heron Lake, they would have tied MLA / Comfrey for the Red Rock Conference championship, both with 7-3 league records. But, the Dutchmen — who had blanked the Wolverines by a 6-0 score a couple of days earlier (May 14) at Edgerton to position themselves for a shot at a share of the championship — were unable to solve the pitching prowess of Fest, along with some timely hitting by the Coyotes.
Adrian, which won its last three conference games, tied Edgerton / SW Christian for second place, both with identical 6-4 records.
Mountain Lake, which won six of its eight non-conference games, was the only one of the six league teams to finish with an overall record (13-5) above .500. Edgerton was 6-7 overall, while both Adrian and Murray County Central (5-5 in conference games) were both 7-9. Red Rock Central (6-12 overall) and HL-O / Fulda (5-10) were both 3-7 in conference games, splitting 3-2 decisions with each other.
It was indeed a close conference race between six fairly-evenly matched teams.
In the upcoming playoffs, Adrian, Edgerton, MCC and RRC will all play in Section 3A South, while Mountain Lake and HL-O will each play to the east in Section 2A, which is not divided into sub-sections. All 15 teams all thrown into one tournament in Section 2, which features some perennial powers like BOLD, Springfield, Mankato Loyola and New Ulm Cathedral, who are all ranked in the Top 10 (second, third, seventh and ninth, respectively) in the latest state-wide QRF rankings — ahead of Mountain Lake Area / Comfrey, which is ranked fifth in the section and 15th in the state.
Minneota (29th in the QRF) is the top-ranked team in Section 3A South, while Edgerton (41st), Wabasso (45th), Adrian (47th) MCC (52nd) are the next four.
Kerkhoven-Murdock-Sunburg has a six-game winning streak and a 13-1 overall record as the top-ranked team in the section (12th in the QRF), while Renville County West (10-5) is next in 3A North, ranked 34th by the highly-complicated QRF formula.
The seeding and pairing are not being determined until late morning on Tuesday after this week’s issue of your weekly paper has gone to press. The baseball tournaments are single elimination in the first round.
Congratulations to the Murray County Central girls and the Heron Lake-Okabena / Fulda boys on winning the Red Rock Conference golf team championships in most impressive fashion.
Individually, MCC had both champions as Abby Hamman won the girls’ title by 46 strokes, carding a three-day total of 240 over 54 holes, far ahead of Hills-Beaver Creek’s Tess Van Maanen’s final score of 286.
MCC freshman Cierra Tutt’s third-place total of 293 helped the Rebels win the team championship convincingly. Westbrook-Walnut Grove’s Brittany Erickson (301) and Adrian sophomore Gracia Elias (303) were fourth and fifth individually with Elias leading Adrian to runner-up honors in the team chase.
Hamman, a junior, has enjoyed much previous success as a high school golfer, including a seventh-place finish at the Class A state meet last spring as a sophomore following a 15th-place performance as a freshman in 2017.
Pierson, a fine all-around senior athlete for the Rebels (cross country and basketball, along with golf), had lots of stellar competition for the boys’ individual championship. Pierson’s winning three-day total of 233 finished nine strokes ahead of HL-O / Fulda senior Cory Renneke (242), followed by W-WG senior Andrew Quade (247), HL-O / Fulda senior Payton Marquardt (248), HL-O / Fulda junior Joe Fischer (248) and Adrian eighth-grader Brock Henning (256) in the top six.
With three of the top five — Renneke, Marquardt and Fischer — it’s easy to see how the Coyotes were the team champions (by an amazing 170 strokes over the four days). Henning led the Adrian boys to a second-place team finish, ahead of W-WG, SW Christian / Edgerton, Red Rock Central and Hills-Beaver Creek, but far behind HL-O / Fulda’s combined winning score of 1,345 — a true team victory!
