The Owatonna VFW baseball team’s season came to a close last weekend in the playoffs as they traveled to Rochester and played four games, winning two.
Their first game was against Rochester Lourdes, winning 12-1. After losing to Rochester Mayo 18-6, they played against Rochester Lourdes and won 5-4. Owatonna had another chance to beat Mayo, but they lost 9-8 in a thriller which ended in a walk-off and ended their season.
The first two games Owatonna played were on Saturday while the last two games were played on Sunday. Owatonna was placed in a tournament section for the weekend with three other teams: Rochester Mayo, Rochester Lourdes, and Byron. Since Mayo had the best regular season of the four teams, all the games in the section last weekend were at their field.
In Owatonna’s first game against Rochester Lourdes, Owatonna scored first in the bottom of the second, going on a two-out rally. The rally started with a single by Layton Schnorenberg and Wyatt Frantesl walked right after that. Will Radel then hit a hard ground ball and reached first base on an error by Rochester Lourdes’ defense, scoring Schnorenberg for Owatonna to take a 1-0 lead.
Owatonna added to their lead in the third inning off of a sacrifice fly by AJ Ulrich to score Isaiah Farwell.
Leading 2-0 in the bottom of the fourth, Owatonna’s offense had a great inning scoring ten runs to take a commanding 12-0 lead. Rochester Lourdes scored one run in the top of the fifth, but that wasn’t enough to extend the game as Owatonna won 12-1 in a five-inning game.
Jace Feuring was the starting pitcher for Owatonna, going three innings and giving up no runs and just one hit. Will Radel came in for relief, going two innings and giving up one run and two hits.
Offensively, Schnorenberg had a fantastic game, going 3-3 with two RBIs. AJ Ulrich also had a great game, going 1-2 with three RBIs.
Owatonna then faced off against Rochester Mayo on Saturday night after their win against Rochester Lourdes. Mayo scored one run in the first and one run in the second, leading Owatonna 2-0 going into the top of the third.
Owatonna scored two runs of their own in the top of the third, tying the game up at two. Owatonna added two more runs in the fourth to take a 4-2 lead, but Mayo scored four runs in their half of the inning, taking a 6-4 lead.
With the bases loaded with two outs, Wyatt Frantesl hit a double and cleared the bases, scoring AJ Ulrich, Bentley Arvig, and Amilio Garza to put Owatonna back on top 7-6.
That was the final time Owatonna held a lead in the game, as Mayo scored five runs in the fifth and another five runs in the sixth. Owatonna scored a run in the sixth inning so it was a 16-8 game heading into the seventh. Unfortunately Owatonna was unable to score, losing to Mayo 16-8.
Owatonna looked to rebound after the loss to Mayo on Sunday as they faced Rochester Lourdes in a rematch.
Owatonna took the lead right away in the first inning off of a double by Will Radel, scoring Jaxson Gautier and Isaiah Farwell. Rochester Lourdes scored a run in the third inning to cut the lead to just one run, but Owatonna scored three in the bottom half of the inning to extend their lead to 5-1.
Rochester Mayo kept in the game as they scored one run in the fifth and entered the seventh inning down by three runs. They scored two runs and had the opportunity to score more to tie and possibly take the lead for the first time in the game, but Joseph Klecker came in for Owatonna to pitch and struck out Mayo’s final batter.
Owatonna had one more chance to beat Rochester Mayo on Sunday night, as they faced off against each other again to decide who would move on in the playoffs.
Owatonna took the lead in the first inning and kept the lead for the majority of the game. Mayo tied the game up at three runs in the third inning, but Owatonna quickly took the lead again in the fourth inning, scoring three runs.
Mayo scored two in the fourth and scored one in the sixth to tie the game up going into the seventh inning. Owatonna scored in the seventh off of a single by Layton Schnorenberg which scored Aedan Tackman and Christian Flores.
Mayo scored two runs of their own in the bottom of the seventh to send the game into extra innings. Owatonna came close to taking the lead in the top of the ninth after two straight doubles by Tackman and Christian Flores, but courtesy runner AJ Ulrich was thrown out at home during Flores’ double, ending the inning.
A leadoff triple by Mayo in the bottom of the ninth allowed Mayo to easily score by a double in the next at-bat, winning the game for Mayo and ending Owatonna’s season.
Despite the loss, the Owatonna VFW baseball season had a great season, with many of the players showing promise ahead of the next spring season for the Huskies baseball team.
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