I know I haven’t been the most consistent with the blogs this year, but I wanted to make sure I got one last one off before it gets closed up. I just wanted to make sure I got a thank you to everyone who has helped to make this summer one of the best of my life. First of all, I wanted to make sure to thank all of our coaches. I really appreciate all the hard work Coach Brandt did this year, all the passion for the game and more importantly for our team that Coach Johnson always had, and all the hard work behind the scenes that Coach Mitzel has done. Along with those three, Mr. Vidal has put in more work than any of us players this summer. He was always the first one to the field (game days and otherwise) and genuinely cared about our team, so a big thanks to him for giving us one of the nicest fields in the state. I also think I speak for all of us when I say thank you to our parents. Not only do they support their own kids, but I especially felt that they welcomed a number of us first-year-to-the-program players, when they easily could have felt some animosity towards us older guys. Also, the guys at the journal have been great to us this year, so thank you Jeff and all of the guys over there that have covered us this year. Lastly and most importantly, I’d like to thank my teammates. Like I said, this was one of the absolute best summers of my life and the main reason for that was because I had a great group of guys around me. It’s tough to put into words, but a team really is a family for the summer and, although we had our ups and downs I wouldn’t have traded any of it. So thanks guys for giving me a great last summer of legion ball, and for the guys that are still around next year; keep working hard and go win us a state tournament. Thanks again. This one will be a summer I don’t forget.

This summer has been one of the best of my life so far, so I was slightly disappointed when I glanced at our schedule the other day and realized we are down to just six regular season games left. This summer has gone way too fast for my liking. With all the long stretches of games the summer seems to have disappeared. It seems like only a few days ago I was racing home from school in Aberdeen in order to make our first practice.
We’re heading to Pierre tomorrow for two. They should be interesting games, as we will play them in the first round of the regional tournament. After that all we have left is two against Williston who gave us two good games up there last week and then one last road trip to Sheridan before the tournaments start. Hopefully these last few weeks will be as much fun as the rest of the season has been.

We went over to Gillette today for 2 games that didn’t go real well.  However, tough losses like these ones help to show a team’s true colors and what I found out tonight is that I have a couple of absolutely amazing teammates.  Not only was it a poor series for us as a team, but also a frustrating one for me personally.  Every inning though, I had at least one teammate come and talk me down and make sure I was ready to help the team for the rest of the night.  Our guys really have started to put the team way ahead of themselves.  Tommy Berg in particular has been a great presence for us this year.  He has a way of keeping things loose, but at the same time has no problem making sure every single one of us are playing our butts off every inning.  Our entire team is really coming together and playing for each other rather than themselves.  It is fun to watch and I’m glad to say I’m a part of this team.

First off I’d like to say happy father’s day to all of the players’ dads. None of us would even be playing this year if it wasn’t for you guys, so thanks for all the hard work.
As far as updates on the tournament in Spearfish, we finished up today with a third place finish. We got a great performance from Tyler Jones on the mound, while Brandon Kiewel finished, throwing the last two innings. We finally got the sticks going today as well, with several of our older players, including myself, breaking out of slumps. Hopefully, now that our hitting is back on track, our pitchers will continue to throw well and our new call ups continue to play well. When we have it all going we should be tough to beat. It’ll be nice to be back at home on Tuesday. Hope to see everyone there. Again thanks to all of our dads.
Kelly Coates

Hey everyone. So I’m not a hundred percent sure how the blog thing is supposed to work, but we’ll give it a shot. My thanks to Jeff down at the Journal for walking me through all the steps for this.

Anyway, just wanted to update everyone on our recent games. We had been in somewhat of a slump as a team lately, losing six games in a row. However, we finally got back on the right side of things today against Winner. We got a great performance from Winkelman on the hill, and finally broke out with a few hits. Some of our new additions to the team hit especially well, including Hayden Hast and Matt Lewis. Glad to get the win today and hopefully this will be the first win of a long winning streak. Talk to everyone soon.