These boys came back to play together, to play for each other and the greater Raider Baseball family”

Legion Head Coach Ryan Seleski

The high school baseball season ended with an abrupt and disappointing thud. A shocking loss in the section tournament kept the highly ranked Raiders out of the MSHSL state baseball tournament. This loss saw 18 of the 23 varsity players graduate without a high school state title to finish their high school career. Thankfully, this group has one more chance to win a state title, this time as part of the Legion state tournament.
“These boys came back to play together, to play for each other and the greater Raider Baseball family,” said Legion Head Coach Ryan Seleski.
Many of these kids have been together since t-ball and they have grown up playing all kinds of sports together. They truly are a family with all that they have been through together. They could have all done their graduation parties at one big location, they are so close of a team.
“The graduates came back for one reason, to make it back to the state tournament,” said assistant coach Pete Teigland. “I’m so happy they were able to achieve this goal. Hopefully the younger kids learned what it is like to play for their teammates and not their batting average. These kids look to make an impact on the high school team next year and this experience will help them.”
Sub-State Tournament 6 had teams from Inver Grove Heights, Oakdale, West St. Paul, St. Paul, Eagan, Lakeville South, East Ridge and Hastings. Each of these teams have future college and amateur ball players on them.
“The fact that there were future college players on these teams reinforces the thought that you can play meaningful, competitive games right in your backyard,” added Teigland.
For the tournament in Hastings, HYAA and the Hastings Hawks worked together to host, and teams noticed. Many compliments were given for the atmosphere, location, concessions, announcing and field conditions. The Hawks, HYAA, VFW players and families all pitched in to reset the field between games, announce, run the scoreboard and run concessions.
“I will repeatedly say, it takes a village, and we have a very special village of people for baseball, especially this group of parents and kids. They are awesome and they step up and help whenever they are asked, some even helped without being asked and that is always such a big relief to us,” said Karnick.
“It takes a lot of hard work to pull off a tournament,” said Teigland. “The field conditions and atmosphere at Vets are second to none. HYAA and the Hawks, with the support of the city, put on a great game day experience for all.”
Hastings kicked the tournament off facing East Ridge winning that game 1-0. They then took on Eagan for the first time in the tournament, winning 4-2. A win against West St. Paul and then Lakeville South put them as the undefeated team in a double elimination tournament against Eagan for the championship. Having defeated the Patriots once already, the Raiders may have entered the first championship game a little lackadaisical. Eagan had to go undefeated in the consolation side of the bracket to get to the championship game and force a second championship game for a shot at state. The Patriots defeated Hastings in game one, 7-3.
The loss was the Raiders first which meant a second game needed to be played to determine the champion. Hastings won game two 12-5 with contributions up and down the lineup.
“It was a total team effort on Saturday,” explained Teigland. “Kids who are not regulars won games for us. Cole Karnick had two RBI singles late in game two and we had awesome pitching from Colton McKnight.”
The 12-5 win sent the Raiders to the Legion State Tournament starting this week.
“The Legion goes all out for these boys during the state tournament,” said Seleski.” Wednesday there is a banquet for all 16 teams in Maple Grove and the team gets hotel accommodations for the tournament.”
Thursday Hastings will play their pool games in Delano with game one at noon against Mankato. Game two is Thursday night at 7:30 against Sartell then the boys have almost a full day off before playing Forest Lake on Friday night at 7:30.
Bracketed play starts Saturday morning and the pool play determines bracket seeding with the top two from each pool moving on to play in an eight-team bracket. The bracketed play is held in Maple Grove.