Freshman baseball tourney in Minot

Hunter's end of season tournament was a double elimination affair up in Minot. St. Mary's no-showed, so the original bracket was scrapped for this format. This meant that they played the Bishop Ryan Freshman at the Burlington Sports Complex. There had been rain earlier in the day, but it was sunny at game time. Century's starting pitcher was friend since grade school Evan.


















Hunter was his battery mate. Hunter caught all five innings of this game, and then came back and caught all five against Dickinson.














Hunter was 2 for 2 in the first game, and went 1 for 2 in the second.

I got this shot of his second hit, a single to center, which got his friend Grant over to third so he could score on the next play which was a suicide squeeze.


If you look closely (click on the picture to make it larger) you can see the ball he just hit on the left side of the panel, not bad for the little Canon Powershot.






Eventually he stole second and scored on a single to the gap. They ended up winning















They moved to the Jack Hoeven diamonds in Minot for the next game, which was against Dickinson. Hunter struck out in the first but beat out an infield single with two outs and plating the tying run.

Disaster in the top of the fifth when a combination of bad decision making, errors, and solid hitting by Dickinson allowed in 5 runs for an 8-3 final score.

This afternoon they scored in the top of the first against Williston but the game was called because of lightning. 10 minutes later it hailed and then dumped 3 inches of rain in less than 1/2 hour.

End of tournament, end of season. Hunter was pretty happy with his performance for his first baseball in three years. He hit well, caught well, needs to work on the arm during the off season. He also pitched three times but was 0-3, this despite having easily the team's lowest ERA. He got beat 1-0, 2-1, and 5-2 but in that third game 4 of the runs were unearned.

He is already looking forward to next year and a chance to move up to the JV team, and then the Varsity if all goes well. Tam and I had a lot of fun watching baseball, but I have to admit that I'm officially a soccer fan- way more action and way more team play, and games won and lost by players not by coaches.