Northfield baseball advances to section semifinals

The No. 2 seeded Northfield High School baseball team (13-8) charted a 9-1 victory over No. 3 seed Byron on Tuesday, May 28 to advance to the semifinals of the 2024 MSHSL Section 1AAA tournament.

The victory sets up a showdown against No. 1 seed Stewartville in tournament play on Saturday, June 1 at Austin’s Marcusen Park. Stewartville punched its ticket to the semifinal game with a 9-1 win over Winona on May 28.

Teams still alive in the elimination bracket of the tournament include Faribault, which defeated Austin 5-1 on May 28, and Kasson-Mantorville, which beat Red Wing by a 9-2 tally. Games in the elimination bracket scheduled for May 30 include Faribault at Winona and Kasson-Mantorville at Byron.

The elimination bracket games will conclude on June 1, with the winner of that bracket facing the winner of the game between Northfield and Stewartville in the title game on June 5 in Austin. The winner of the elimination bracket will have to win twice in the finals, while the winner of the winner's bracket just needs one victory.

The section tournament champion will then advance to the 2024 MSHSL Class AAA championship tournament on June 13-14 and 17.

At Memorial Field in Dundas on May 28, Northfield saw Byron take a 1-0 lead in the top of the first inning but that proved to be the extend of the Bears’ offensive effort as Raider pitcher Tegan Mellgren went on to pitch six scoreless inning to gain the victory with just four hits allowed and seven strikeouts to his credit.

“Pitching wise, our guys have given us the chance to win all year but this was a big performance by Tegan today, just stepping up,” NHS coach Josh Spitzack said. “He wanted the ball today and it was fun to watch.”

In addition to the solid work of Mellgren on the mound, Northfield’s defense was stellar with no errors allowed in the game. The combination of quality pitching and strong play in the field proved to be a winning combination in shutting down Byron.

“As a pitcher knowing that you have good d (defense) behind you is huge. You can have the confidence out there like Tegan had when guys are making the plays behind him. We’ve had a couple good games here with defense making the plays, so that is going to be key if we can keep that going,” Spitzack said.

Northfield’s offense started to roll in the first inning as Mellgren walked. His courtesy runner Jack Pribyl then advanced to second on a single by Kam Kaiser and went to third after Austin Koep was hit by a pitch. Primly then scored the game’s first run thanks to a wild pitch by Byron’s Aidan Gross.

The Raiders pushed their lead to 2-1 thanks to a double by Seth Thompson that scored Kaiser. To round out the rally, Koep went on to score thanks to an RBI by Aaron Reisetter to make the score 3-1.

After two scoreless innings, Northfield added two runs in the fourth inning that was started with a hit by pitch to Reisetter. His courtesy runner Dylan Morrow then moved to third on a single by Kyan Rauk and he later scored on an RBI by Ryan Cahoon. Logan Prescott, who was pinch running for Rauk, then took third on a stolen base and came home when the throw down attempt by Byron went into left field.

In the fifth inning, Northfield scored three more runs with a two-out rally that started with a single by Kaiser. A double by Koep scored Kaiser and that was followed by an RBI single off the bat of Thompson that scored Koep and a double by Reisetter that scored pinch runner Gabe Heinritz.

The Raiders’ base running prowess added another run in the sixth inning as Jake Geiger singled and then advanced on stolen bases to third. He later scored on a double steal play that saw Pribyl take second while Geiger scored after the Byron throw down to second went into centerfield.

In the game, Northfield outhit the Bears 7-4 as Thompson led the Raiders with two hits and two RBIs. Geiger, Kaiser, Koep, Reisetter and Rauk all had one hit for NHS. The Raiders also had four stolen bases in the game.

Spitzack added his insight into Northfield’s ability to create runs against Byron.

“We got some key hits during the game and when we didn’t get the hit, we put the ball into play to score some runs and those runs can really come back and be big,” Spitzack said. “We had some guys who were aggressive on the base paths and we were able to steal a couple of runs there and we got the hits when we needed them.”