Archives - Summer 2010

Monday: The two teams that beat Associated Fire -- League City (TX) and Midwest City (OK) -- played today at 2:00pm. Score: Midwest City (OK) 8, League City (TX) 0.

Championship Game: Midwest City (OK) 7, Pontotoc (MS) 2.

Midwest City (OK) [a/k/a Oklahoma Outlaws] advances to AL World Series.

National Legion website - MidSouth Regional

Tournament Host Website

Game Tracker (live stats)

Tournament Bracket

Tournament Stats

Associated Fire Stats

Images of 2010 - A Photo Retrospective

August 8, 2010

Below is a collection of photos taken during the 2010 spring and summer seasons. Think of it as our way of saying "goodbye" to the 2010 season. Photography by Bob Irlbeck, Steven Branscombe, Chad Ebel and Jack Mayfield.

To view these photos in full-screen size, click on this link to open the gallery, then click in the upper-right corner on the button that says "Slide Show." The slide show includes 121 photos and runs about 18 minutes. You may need to change your screen-saver settings to make sure that your screen-saver does not come on while the slide show is running. And, here's a link to a few comments about the photos. Enjoy.

Regional Play Begins Thursday for Kearney Runza and Associated Fire Protection

August 4, 2010

Class A Senior Legion champion Associated Fire Protection (Papillion LaVista South) and runner up Kearney Runza both travelled today to their respective Regional Tournament sites for competition which begins tomorrow and which could lead to a trip to the American Legion World Series. Associated Fire left Omaha's Eppley Airport on a commercial flight to Dallas / Ft. Worth early this morning with their eventual destination being Quik Trip Park in suburban Grand Prairie where they will play in the Mid-South Regional. Meanwhile, the Kearney Runza team and coaches boarded a chartered bus headed to Hidden Valley Park in the Kansas City suburb of Blue Springs, Missouri to compete in the Central Plains Regional. | More |

Team Nebraska Headed to Chicago Area for Weekend Showcase Tournament

July 30, 2010

A select group of returning upperclassmen from eastern Nebraska will represent the Cornhusker State in the 11th Annual Midwest Classic Baseball Tournament in Plainfield, Illinois this weekend. Under the direction of Ralston Senior Legion head coach / Omaha Burke assistant coach Scott Hodges and Omaha Bryan head coach Mike Demilia, a hand-picked roster of sixteen players will compete in a field of twelve teams from Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Ohio, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Indiana, Maryland and Kentucky. Team Nebraska will play a total of five games with two on Friday, one on Saturday and two on Sunday. | More |

State Champion to be Crowned in Kearney on Saturday

July 30, 2010

For the first time since the introduction of the sixteen-team state tournament format in 2005, the Class A Senior Legion state champion will not be crowned in Omaha. Saturday night's state championship game at Memorial Field in Kearney between the National Division champion, Kearney Runza (46-5), and the American Division champion, Associated Fire Protection (31-11), marks the first time in the six-year history of the state championship playoff game between the winners of the two state tournaments that it will be played in a location other than Omaha. | More |

Team USA and Japanese Collegiate All-Stars to Tune Up at Fricke

July 19, 2010

Local baseball fans will get to see some of the top collegiate players from two sides of the globe Tuesday evening at Fricke Field in Papillion. In preparation for Wednesday's single-game International Friendship Competition at Rosenblatt between the 2010 USA Baseball Collegiate National Team ("Team USA") and the Japanese Collegiate All-Stars, both teams will tune-up Tuesday in a special exhibition doubleheader at Fricke. At 5:00 Team USA will take on the local Diamond Spirit team that plays in the collegiate MINK league and features many former Nebraska high school standouts, including Brandon Bass, Brandon Winkelman, Jory Goldstrom, Brett Koehn, Aaron Beil, Michael Blatchford and others. The Japanese All-Stars will follow in an 8:00 game against a Strike Zone travel team composed of current collegiate players, including Colby McCord, Charlie Krueger, Ryan Tomlinson and several former Millard South players.

Team USA includes twelve players that competed in the 2010 College World Series, including MVP Jackie Bradley, Jr. of South Carolina, UCLA's Gerrit Cole and Steve Rodriguez and Sean Gilmartin of Florida. The USA team will also play the Strike Zone team at 2:30 on Thursday at Westside unless that date is needed as the rain date for the International Friendship Competition.

Admission to Tuesday's doubleheader event is free. Baseball fans are strongly encouraged to catch these quality teams in action.

| Team USA Roster | International Friendship Competition | Diamond Spirit | Strike Zone Travel Team

| Fricke Flyer |

State Tournament Hopefuls Fight for Berths

July 18, 2010; updated July 20

Championship games will be played in all seven Class A Junior Legion Area Tournaments today and in Areas 5 and 7 in the Class A Senior Legion division. In each of six Class A Seniors tournaments, where one team has already qualified for one of the two state tournament berths, the other state qualifier will be decided today. The competition in today's "winner goes to state, loser goes home" games should be as hot as the weather. | More |

The Secret to Keeping the 12 Year Old Pitching Until He is 35 Years Old

July 12, 2010 by Travis Manners, Athletes' Training Center

Baseball continues to be America’s pastime, and the youth game continues to draw over 20 million players each year. Many of these players aspire to be the next Roy Halladay or Stephen Strasberg, but unfortunately many of these players fall victim to injuries or never fully develop as a player which derails their dream. This derailment does not have to happen. | More |

Ryan Etter Selected To Recieve Jewell Award as Prep Honors Seniors

July 12, 2010 by Steven Branscombe

Sometimes, the game means more in the stands than it does in the standings. Saturday’s game at Jurgensen Park between DiGiorgio’s (Gross) and PI Midwest (Creighton Prep) was one of those games. Regardless of the outcome on the field, both teams already had their assignments for this week’s American Legion Area Tournament play. The game was more about remembering a former player and honoring the Prep seniors. | More |

Reserve League Regular Season Reaches Final Week; State Tournament Sites Announced

July 11, 2010

The regular season of the thirty-five team Nebraska Reserve Baseball League comes to a conclusion this week with teams in three of the four divisions scrambling to complete their games ahead of Thursday's midnight deadline. Thirty-one games remain to be played over the next five days as several teams will be making up games that were rained out earlier in the season. | More |

Kearney Runza Hits Stride Going Into Post-Season

July 10, 2010

"We've been putting it all together the past couple of weeks," observes Kearney Runza head coach Steve Spongberg. This week's accomplishments would certainly support that statement by the veteran coach as Runza won the Cornhusker League championship on Monday, had three players homer in the Cornhusker All-Star game on Tuesday and captured the championship of the twenty-one team Mike Peterson Tournament on Wednesday. The Kearney team followed up those accomplishments with an 18-3 shellacking of Deeb Mustangs (Millard North) and a 9-0 win over Fremont First State Bank yesterday to improve its record to 36-4. | More |

Key To Omaha Wildcats and Associated Fire Protection Juniors Repeat as Metro League Champs

July 7, 2010

Familiar faces sit atop the 2010 Metro League standings following the completion of the league's regular season last night. Key To Omaha Wildcats (Millard West) repeated as league champions in the Senior Legion division of the league with an 9-1 record, and Associated Fire Protection reprised their 2009 Junior Legion division championship with a perfect 11-0 record. Both teams were rewarded with #1 seeds in next week's area tournaments which will begin Tuesday for the Juniors and Wednesday for the Seniors.

| More |

Metro League Season Concludes Today

July 6, 2010

The Metro League will conclude its regular season today with three Senior Legion games and one Junior Legion game on the schedule. Following the conclusion of the regular season which consisted of 105 Senior Legion games and 132 Junior Legion games, league coaches will meet tomorrow at Westside High School to seed the four Metro Senior Legion Area Tournaments and four Junior Legion Area Tournaments based on the final league standings. Area Tournaments will begin for both Juniors and Seniors next Wednesday, July 14, and will be played through July 19 with the Area Champions in the Junior division and both the Champions and Runners-up in the Seniors division advancing to State Tournaments to be played July 23 through 27. (See "Tournaments" link for more information.)

Based on our unofficial projections, Associated Fire Protection (11-0) appears to have repeated as the Metro League Junior Legion Champion, #1 overall seed and the top seed in the Area 1 tournament. Prep Junior Bluejays (11-0) and third-place Key To Omaha Wildcats (10-1) are expected to be the league runner-up and third-place team and the top seeds in Area 2 and Area 3, respectively. With a win today against Grunwald Vikings, Ralston First State Bank could lock up the top seed in the Area 4 Tournament with a 9-2 league record. A loss by Ralston today would likely allow PrimeTime Patriots (8-3) to nab the #1 seed in Area 4.

The three games to be played today in the Senior Legion division of the League are not expected to disturb the current order at the top of the league standings where four 9-1 teams are each situated to be #1 seeds in their respective Areas. Of that group, Key To Omaha Wildcats is projected to repeat as the Metro League Senior Legion Champion, top overall seed and #1 seed in Area 1, followed by PI Midwest as the league runner-up and #1 seed in Area 2, Elkhorn Post 211 as the League's third-place team and top seed in Area 3 and PrimeTime Patriots as the #1 seed in Area 4.

All teams are to be commended for completing their league schedules despite a very rainy June in which rainfall occurred on fourteen of the thirty days in the month.

Our readers are reminded that our projections are unofficial and that the official Area Tournament seedings will be published here following tomorrow's meetings.

More Info: | Metro Seniors Standings Spreadsheet | Metro Juniors Standings Spreadsheet |

Teams From Across the Nation Meet in Omaha for CWS Tournaments

June 21, 2010

Nebraska teams will compete this week against teams from across the nation drawn to Omaha by the College World Series. Two jumbo 19U tournaments will provide an opportunity for local Senior Legion teams to compete against sixty-six teams from more than twenty states. | More |

Prep Grabs Lead in Metro Juniors Race

June 17, 2010

With two weeks remaining in the Metro League regular season, the Prep Junior Bluejays hold a slim lead in a three-way horse race atop the standings of the Junior Legion Division of the League. Coach Joe Ryberg's ballclub (8-0 League, 19-2 overall), currently ranks #1 in the standings and has a good shot at running the table with three games left against sub-.500 opponents. Meanwhile, its two main rivals for League supremacy, Key to Omaha Wildcats (7-0, 19-2) and Associated Fire Protection Titans (7-0, 22-2), must go head-to-head in a League game next Tuesday evening, June 22 at 8:00 at Millard West. | More |

Rain Slows Progress of Metro League Seniors Schedule

June 14, 2010

Following heavy rainfall in late May and early June, rain-soaked ballfields have caused the twenty-one teams in the Metro League - Senior Legion Division to struggle to keep up with their schedule of League games so far this season. Heading into the fourth week of the League's six-week season, teams have completed only two-thirds of the games scheduled to be played to date. The Senior teams each play a ten-game League schedule with games generally played on Tuesdays and Wednesdays each week. No teams have played all six of their scheduled League games so far, and some teams have played as few as two or three League games. Teams are scheduling additional make-up games to replace rainouts prior to the July 6th cutoff date for the completion of League competition. Results of League play will be used to seed the teams into four Area Tournaments at a League seeding meeting on July 7th. Those Area Tournaments will be played July 14 - 19 at four Metro locations. | More |

Sophomore Team Nebraska to Compete in Oklahoma Tournament

June 3, 2010

Hall of Fame coach Bill Olson and a hand-picked team of fourteen Nebraska players who just completed their sophomore year are en route to Edmond, Oklahoma today where they will compete in the 14th Annual Sunbelt Classic baseball tournament this weekend. The eight-team tournament field also includes two teams from Texas and five teams from Oklahoma that will each play a round-robin schedule of seven games Thursday through Saturday. Team Nebraska will play two games tonight, two on Friday and three on Saturday. The event concludes with pairings on Sunday based on pool play records, including a championship game between the top two finishers. | More |

Ehlers Repeats as Gatorade Player of the Year

June 2, 2010

In its 25th year of honoring the nation’s best high school athletes, The Gatorade Company, in collaboration with ESPN RISE, today announced the selection of Logan Ehlers of Nebraska City High School as its 2009-10 Gatorade Nebraska Baseball Player of the Year. | More |

Millard West Duo Heads List of Coaches' All-Metro Selections

May 25, 2010


Ladwig	Kruger

Millard West High School’s AJ Ladwig and Kyle Kruger headline a list of twenty-eight Metro Conference baseball players selected to receive post-season honors by the league’s varsity baseball coaches. Ladwig, a junior right-hander who compiled an 8-1 record, and Kruger, a speedy senior centerfielder who hit .443 and scored 52 runs for the 32-5 Wildcats, were unanimous selections on the fourteen-player All-Metro First Team. The Wildcats led the way with four First-Team honorees, followed by Millard South with three. The two Papillion schools – Papillion-LaVista and Class A State Champion Papillion-LaVista South – each placed two players on the First-Team roster. | More |