The state high school baseball tournament opens at Principal Park in Des Moines with a couple of first round games in Class 1A.
Remsen St. Mary’s makes a seventh appearance in the tournament with a matchup against Southeast Warren. Remsen coach Jim Klein says it was the pre-season goal of his team to get to the state tournament.
“These five seniors, when we started throwing in January, they had their minds set that this is what they were going to do and nothing was going to get in the way to let it happen,” Klein says.
Despite a 24-8 record the Hawks com into the tournament unranked. Klein says the players don’t mind as they hoped to play most of the season “under the radar” and out of the rankings. Klein describes his team’s mindset: “Let’s just play ball every game and then, hopefully, at the end people will start noticing us.”
In the second game of the evening, top-ranked and defending state champ Mason City Newman plays Nishnabotna.