Hawks, Toppers ride strong starts to success
Who’s going to be strong in high school baseball and softball in the area, come playoff time? All you had to do was watch the first inning in two games simultaneously at Wade Stadium Tuesday to get a good idea.
At the softball complex adjacent to Wade Stadium, Hermantown took on Denfeld in what would be a critical battle at the top of area softball programs Tuesday afternoon. But in this case, the Hermantown Hawks didn’t give the Hunters much chance.
Hermantown sprayed hits all around the field and scored 8 runs in the top of the first inning. Then coach Tom Banks sent ace pitcher Breanna Thomas out to pitch. It was startling when she gave up a long, leadoff home run; it was less startling when that was the only run she gave up, as the Hawks cruised to a 13-1 victory that allowed them to remain undefeated at 7-0.
After watching a couple innings there, I walked inside Wade Stadium where upstart Marshall was taking on Cloquet in a boys baseball battle. The Hilltoppers had already blanked Cloquet in the top of the first, and came up in the last of the first and scored five times.
It was 6-0 after two, and wound up 7-2 for Marshall, as Derek Winn had good control — of his pitches and of the game. That victory makes Marshall 8-1 for the season, one of its best starts in years.
While high school baseball and softball has a couple weeks to go in regular season, this is already playoff week in college softball, where both UMD, in Division 2, and St. Scholastica and Wisconsin-Superior, in Division 3, move into conference tournaments. The chance to advance to the NCAA tournament competition rides on those outcomes.
The UMD softball team is in Sioux Falls, S.D., for the Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference tournament. Normally the Bulldogs would have been fighting for the regular season title, but the Bulldogs struggled at the finish this time.
In Thursday’s opening round, UMD takes on St. Cloud State, with the winner advancing to play another game Thursday. In other opening games, Minot plays Southwest Minnesota State, Northern State plays Sioux Falls, and Bemidji State faces Augustana. Minnesota State-Mankato and Winona State await two of those winners for games later Thursday, with the rest advancing to double-elimination play Friday.
A year ago, the Upper Midwest Athletic Conference softball tournament was one of the season’s highlights for dramatic finishes. Wisconsin-Superior, in its first season in the UMAC, had to win its way up and did exactly that, upsetting season champ and top-seeded St. Scholastica in the double-elimination play at the Saints Kenwood Avenue field.
The Saints fought back, and whipped UWS in a rematch, which set up the final game between the two. In ultra-dramatic fashion, UWS got the lead and was clinging to it in the final inning, where former Denfeld teammates Sarah Hendrickson, pitching for UWS, faced Nikki Logergren, the Saints top hitter.
Logergren, who had homered earlier in the game, was a powerful left-handed hitter, and with runners on, she socked a long, high fly to center field. If it went over the fence, St. Scholastica would win; if it was an out, UWS would have its upset championship and a berth in the NCAA regional. The ball flew to the center-field fence, but the Yellowjackets center-fielder caught it right up against the fence, and UWS prevailed.
If you like a little deja vu, go back to last weekend. St. Scholastica lost its final game at Crown College, 5-4, after the Saints had won the first game of the doubleheader 7-1. Crown wound up 12-4 in the UMAC, but couldn’t prevent St. Scholastica from fashioning a 14-2 league record to clinch its ninth straight UMAC championship and 19th overall.
Meanwhile, UWS swept North Central 8-0 and 11-2 to finish 9-7 in UMAC play, good for fourth place and a slot in the five-team UMNAC tournament. It will, once again, be held at St. Scholastica, which is the Saints bounty for winning the title.
The double-elimination tournament runs through the weekend.
UMD’s baseball team has this weekend still to play to finish the NSIC regular season, facing Northern State in a pair of doubleheaders at Bulldog Park with games at 1:30 and 3:30 Friday, and at noon and 2 on Saturday.
TWINS BOUNCE BACK
The Minnesota Twins seem to flow like a roller-coaster, perhaps depending on the level of their opposition. Don’t know what that says about the Oakland A’s, except that its not fair to measure them by Tuesday’s series opener at Target Field, because Ervin Santana was pitching for the Twins.
Santana went six innings, gave up 3 hits and 0 runs, walking 3 and striking out 7. Santana, who is a master of fastballs but mainly of down-breaking sliders that are unhittable, now has a 5-0 record.
The Twins got the jump in the third inning, when Brian Dozier homered. Max Kepler got on, and Miguel Sano bombed a towering blast out onto the sitting area above and beyond the batter’s eye in dead center field. In the fourth, catcher Jason Castro homered to dead center and it was 4-0. In the seventh, Byron Buxton hit his first homer of the season, and Dozier followed with his second homer of the game. Joe Mauer then joined the fun with his first home run, a 2-run shot with Sano on base.
That made it 8-0, and Buxton drove in the final run with a ground out in the eighth, before the A’s got their only run in the ninth.
How can anyone figure out this team? Sano was hitting .317 as of Tuesday night, with 8 home runs. And he is making spectacular plays at third base, game after game. Buxton keeps catching the ball in center, and while he’s only hitting .153 as the No. 9 hitter in the lineup, it is clear that Buxton is finally making solid contact, most of the time.
The best part is if the Twins keep riding the current surge through the current homestand, they could move right back up into contention.
