ST. CLOUD -- The Bemidji High School baseball team daydreamed of championship blue and a late-season trip to Target Field this year.
Seven innings morphed that dream into a nightmare on Tuesday.
The Lumberjacks lost 2-0 to Rocori at Joe Faber Field in St. Cloud, squashing the team’s state aspirations with an early exit from the Section 8-3A Tournament.
“Everybody in the section was good this year,” BHS head coach Mike Fogelson said. “Yeah, we had goals to go a long ways, but getting out of our section is tough in itself. Tip your cap to some of these other teams.”
A familiar Achilles heel tormented Bemidji on Tuesday. The Jacks (15-8) faced an offensive drought as temperatures surged into the mid-90s.
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“We had a lot bigger goals,” Fogelson said. “Unfortunately, we just couldn’t get it going on offense late in the year. Obviously today, that showed up in a big way.”
Fourteen of the 21 BHS outs came on pop-ups and fly outs. Rocori pitcher Brady Blattner went the distance for a complete-game shutout, allowing just one runner to even reach third base.
“You’re not going to be successful hitting a lot of pop flys,” Fogelson said. “I know the guys are trying really hard. It’s just a bummer that that’s how it went.”
The fourth-seeded Spartans (14-9) snuck out two early runs because second-seeded Bemidji wasn’t as sharp as it needed to be in the field. The first run scored on Blattner’s RBI single after a bobbled ball erased a tailor-made double play and kept a runner on the basepaths.
An inning later, consecutive errors on ground balls up the middle allowed Brady Linn to score for the 2-0 advantage through two.
From then on out, the Lumberjacks cleaned up the defense -- and even had some SportsCenter-worthy diving catches out of Brandon Lussier and Ethan Biehn -- while Aaron Heger turned in a solid performance from the rubber. Heger threw seven innings and allowed two runs (both unearned) off five hits while striking out four.
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But the offense never backed him up. Bemidji was 0-for-9 with runners in scoring position.
The biggest threat came in the fifth inning, when Parker Mistic got Isaiah Biehn to third on a perfectly executed hit-and-run, but the two-on, two-out rally ended a batter later. In the seventh, Ethan Biehn cracked a one-out double to bring the tying run to the plate, but he was stranded on the bases without another scare.
“Heger pitched his butt off,” said Fogelson. “The defense, early in the game, let him down a little bit. But I think the defense recovered after that and played really well the last five innings of the game, and Heger was just lights out. But it’s hard, you’re not going to win if you don’t score runs.”
Fogelson commended the entire senior class and mentioned how proud he was to coach them. The group certainly looked worthy of reaching the state tournament, but a mighty section had other plans. The gauntlet that is Section 8-3A includes five of six teams within the top 21 of the state rankings.
“Winning our section is tough every year,” said Fogelson, who coached the Lumberjacks’ most recent section championship in 2012. “Our first goal in any year is to win this section, but it’s a tough section, so you’ve got to bring it. … That’s why you’ve got to go play the game. Goals are part of it, but you’ve got to go play.”
Bemidji graduates 13 seniors in JD Kondos, Derek Young, Aiden Spaeth, Grant DeClusin, Alec Meland, Aaron Hoefer, Josh Nyberg, Hayden Hommes, Colt Uhlenhopp, Tyler Simon, Isaiah Biehn, Lussier and Heger.
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