The 2024 Legion baseball regular season is in the books and what’s left of the summer for five southwest Illinois teams is the District 22 Tournament.
Highland Post 439 Senior Legion plays host to the District 22 Tournament at Glik Park in Highland beginning on Thursday night.
Alton Post 126 (12-15) is the No. 1 seed followed by No. 2 Highland (12-5), No. 3 Marissa Senior, No. 4 Smithton Senior, and number No. 5 Edwardsville Senior.
“Alton’s number one and we’re number two and we each only lost one district game and we had a rainout at the end of the season we couldn’t get made up,” Highland manager Todd Kunz said. “I think they were going to get number one anyway because they had us by run differential.”
Kunz will have a few challenges to deal with over the weekend as well due to four key players who will miss part or all of the tournament due to work commitments, vacation, or football workouts. Pitchers Isaiah Gruenenfelder and David Carroll, along with Caden Hughes and Bruce Hoehnsten will have limited or no availability which will force Kunz to juggle his roster a bit but still be effective in the tournamdent.
“It’s really disappointing but even with all this going on I still think we have a pretty decent shot at getting through the district,” Kunz said.
Highland won the tournament on a strong roll, having won six straight games to close the regular season.
Post 439 scored 51 runs during that closing stretch and averaged 8.5 runs per game as the Highland bats continued their torrid pace at the plate against opposing teams this summer.
“The sticks have come around and we’re really rolling as a team and everything’s coming together,” Kunz said.
Post 439 begins tournament play tomorrow at 8 p.m. with a first-round game against Edwardsville.
Kunz believes his club will have to continue its solid all-around play, especially on defense to advance to the 5 th Division Tournament fore the first time since 2019.
“If we can play clean defense, and the outfield can show up and get the job done there I think we can get it done,” Kunz said.
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