Prep report: Esko, South Ridge top seeds for state baseball
Jun. 10—DULUTH — The three baseball teams still in contention to end the 2022-23 school year with a state championship received their assignments for the state tournament after the Minnesota State High School League released the brackets on Saturday morning, June 10.
Both Esko (Class AA) and South Ridge (Class A) are the No. 1 seeds in their brackets, and so will play at about the same time in neighboring fields in St. Cloud.
Esko, making its first appearance at state since its only previous trip in 2000, will play a state quarterfinal at 3 p.m. on Tuesday, June 13 on Dick Putz Field against St. Agnes, the Section 4AA champs. The Aggies will be making their ninth state tournament appearance and third in a row, finishing fourth in 2022 and losing in the quarterfinals in 2021.
The Eskomos enter the tournament 24-1 after sweeping through the Section 7AA tournament without playing a game decided by fewer than six runs. Esko's only loss of the season came in its regular-season finale against Wadena-Deer Creek on May 25. Earlier that same day in Perham, Minnesota, Esko defeated the host Yellowjackets 3-0. Perham qualified for state but is unseeded and the other side of the bracket, while W-DC was upset in the first round of Section 6AA.
The Esko-St. Agnes winner will meet either No. 4 Holy Family Catholic or No. 5 Cannon Falls in the semifinals on Wednesday, June 14 at 1:30 p.m.
South Ridge (22-4), which beat Cherry in two championship games on Thursday, June 8 to win Section 7A for the fifth consecutive time, will play at 3:30 p.m. at Joe Faber Field. The Panthers will face the unseeded Belgrade-Brooten-Elrosa Jaguars, who are first-time state tournament participants. They were the top seed in their subsection of the 6A bracket despite having a losing (8-11) record in the regular season, then won five straight tournament games to make state.
The winner of Tuesday's quarterfinal will play at 1:30 p.m. on Wednesday against No. 4 Legacy Christian Academy or No. 5 Fosston.
After upsetting Hermantown to win Section 7AAA on its home field last week, Grand Rapids went into the state tournament bracket unseeded, but far from unfamiliar with its opponent, No. 2 seed St. Thomas Academy. Rapids defeated St. Thomas in the 2021 AAA semifinals and both teams played on different sides of the AAA bracket last year.
The Thunderhawks and the Cadets will play at the Mini-Met in Jordan, Minnesota on Tuesday at 10 a.m. The winner will face Byron or third-seeded Mahtomedi (a team Grand Rapids has played in the last two state tournaments) in Wednesday's semifinals.
This year's state championship games are all scheduled for Friday, June 16 at CHS Field in St. Paul. For the first time since it opened in 2010, Target Field will not host the finals, possibly because the Twins start a season-long 10-game homestand on Tuesday vs. the Brewers.
