Hastings American Legion Post 47 had to work for it, but finally punched their ticket to the state tournament this week in Rochester, taking the winner take all game Sunday night in Eagan.
Legion 47 started their journey with a 15-3 shellacking of Red Wing in the first game of the tournament, which advanced them on to winners bracket action on Thursday against Saint Paul Park, in which they won a close battle 6-4. This sent them to Saturday morning, against a West Saint Paul team that was a mix of Saint Thomas and Two Rivers players. Hastings prevailed 6-4 to send them to the championship. West Saint Paul would beat Lakeville South setting up a rematch. WSP would need to beat Hastings twice in order to win, and Hastings would drop the first game 4-3, setting up the winner take all matchup. Wearing their slick powder blue throwback uniforms, Legion 47 prevailed and punched their ticket.
State Format: The state format is as follows, 4 groups of 4, or pools, will see round robin play Thursday and Friday. Hastings is grouped with Sartell, Wayzata and Duluth. The top two teams from each group advance to the bracket format Saturday and Sunday, with the winner of the bracket format Sunday representing MN in the Regionals tournament in Rapid City, South Dakota the first week of August. Should they make it there and then win that, the American Legion Baseball World Series is in Shelby, North Carolina August 10 through August 15.
The American Legion Post 47 team consists of players from the Hastings High School baseball programs and is coached by Ryan Seleski and Pete Teigland. A full list of players is as follows, courtesy of the Legion page on the HYAA website:
1 Maximus Falk-Gensmer
2 Jack Seleski
3 Blake Vandehoef
4 Mark DeNoyer
5 Connor Zgoda
6 Edward Peine
8 Aaron Vandehoef
9 Gavin Odman
10 John Teigland
11 Jarod Neuville
12 Sawyer Tjomsland
14 Drew Gillespie
15 Evan Nelson
17 Mitch Iliff
21 Tanner Anselment
7 Gavin Radant
28 Austin Werner
30 Benjamin Thome
