HIBBING—Last season, the Hibbing VFW baseball team went into the District 8 Tournament as the No. 1 seed, but Post 1221 fell short of their intnded goal.
This year, Hibbing gets a chance to redeem itself as Post 1221 has the No. 1 seed and will start Eighth District play beginning at 2:30 p.m., against either East Duluth or Rock Ridge at Ordean Field in Duluth.
In other games, Grand Rapids will play South Ridge at 12 p.m., and West Duluth will get that winner at 5 p.m. in the six team double-elimination tournament.
For Hibbing co-coach Tim Zubich, his team couldn’t be in a better position.
“Getting that first-round bye was huge,” Zubich said. “But being the No. 1 seed, you have a target on your back with teams thinking, ‘They must be better than we thought,’ type of thing.’
“We’ve beaten every team in the district, but they’ve all been close games. The margin of error is small. This is the most evenly matched district that I’ve seen in a long time.”
Post 1221 got that No. 1 seed on their own merit, having been consistent in all three phases of the game—pitching, hitting and defense.
“We’ve been playing well,” Zubich said. “We’ve been consistent most of the year, doing the little things and improving on each and every one of them. We’ve worked on our base running, too.
“We want to be aggressive, but running smart. That’s an area we needed to improve upon. We want to get better reads on the ball. We’ve been swinging it well, too, but we’ll see some tough pitching. That will be a test.”
As for East Duluth and Rock Ridge, Hibbing split with Rock Ridge, but they did beat East Duluth twice.
“They’re both solid teams,” Zubich said. “We’re familiar with each other. The big question is did we see their full lineups with kids being gone for different reasons? We might see a different team come playoff time. That’s going to be interesting to see.
“They both swing it well, and they play good defense. Their pitchers are around the plate. They throw strikes. They didn’t walk us a whole bunch.”
That’s the one area Hibbing has struggled with this season, giving up too many base on balls.
“At this time of the year, we can’t be giving up free passes, but we have to ride guys to see if they can find it,” Zubich said. “We’ve got a lot of guys that can jump on the hill, but consistency is the biggest thing.
“If we throw strikes, our defense has been solid. We can pick it up, but you can’t defend a walk. We have to throw it over the plate and see what happens.”
The one advantage Hibbing might have is a veteran team that didn’t perform as well as they wanted to last year.
“They’ve all been here before,” Zubich said. “We came up shorter than we would have liked, but that’s hard to do. This is a tough game, but a fun game. We have to go out there and lay it all out on the line, then whatever happens, happens.
“Hopefully, we play our best, but sometimes, that’s not how it goes.”
Winner’s bracket and elimination-game brackets will be played Sunday, beginning at 9:30 a.m., 12 p.m., 2:30 p.m. 5 p.m.
The winners’ bracket final will be at 5 p.m. Monday, then another game, if necessary, will be played at 5 p.m. Tuesday.
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