The Cloquet VFW baseball team garnered the No. 1 seed in the Sub-District VFW baseball tournament over this past weekend. Cloquet ran off three straight wins against Esko, Duluth East and Hermantown. Cloquet will take their No. 1 seed to the eight-team District tournament this Saturday.
Adam Hanson earned the pitching win in Cloquet's opening 12-3 win over Esko. Hanson allowed just one hit over the first three innings.
"We pounded out 17 hits," mentioned coach Rick Stowell. "August Reynolds and Peter LaCourse each had three hits while Dedric Clark, Connor Stowell and Hanson all had two hits. Reynolds also finished with four RBIs."
With two outs in the second inning and two runners on in a 0-0 game, Cloquet had consecutive hits from Stowell, Hanson, LaCourse, Reynolds and Tyler Tollerud to take an 8-0 lead and break the game open.
- In the subdistrict semifinals on Saturday, Cloquet downed Duluth East 11-6 as Thomas Rogers threw a complete game with 11 strikeouts.
"In the bottom of the first inning, Hanson drew a leadoff walk, LaCourse bunted him over, and after a pop-up, Tollerud came through with an two-out RBI single," Stowell recalled. "East rebounded with back-to-back doubles off Rogers and a single to take a 2-1 lead after two innings. Our pitching priorities in order are location, movement, velocity. Even with a quality pitcher like Rogers throwing against a VFW team, they can hit fast balls and especially fast balls belt high."
According to Stowell, Rogers made an adjustment and ended up getting most of his strikeouts on off-speed pitches. Cloquet scored six runs in the bottom of the third inning and never looked back.
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- Sunday Cloquet defeated Hermantown 5-3 in a wild affair that saw Dedric Clark pitch six strong innings with seven strikeouts and just four hits. LaCourse earned the save. Meanwhile, Cloquet had nine hits with Reynolds, Clark and Stowell each picking up two hits.
"We had our best base-running game and best heads-up game in two years," Stowell said. "Offensively, the play of the game was made by Jared Anderson. With the game tied at 1-1 and two outs in the bottom of the fourth inning, Rogers was at first, Anderson was at second and Stowell was at the plate with a full count. With two outs and a full count, and a runner in a force situation, most players know they should run on the pitch."
What ensued was a ground ball to the third baseman, who went to step on third, but because Anderson had taken off he was able to beat the third baseman to the bag and was called safe. The third baseman then hurried a throw to first, but overthrew the bag, allowing Anderson and Rogers, who never quit running on the play, to score all the way from first with a head first slide just beating the catcher's tag.
"On the throw, Connor (Stowell) was able to advance all the way to third," explained coach Stowell. "Just two pitches later, a wild pitch allowed Connor to score and we were up 4-1."
Stowell mentioned that had Anderson not been running all out, the inning would have been over with the game still tied at 1-1.
"It's that kind of effort from all three of those players, and that kind of heads-up baseball, that is the difference in close games," said Stowell. "Defensively we ended up in the same situation later in the game."
In the top of the fifth inning, Hermantown had the bases loaded with two outs and full count on the batter. Cloquet's pitcher and their second baseman, Stowell, were on the same page for a pick-off play, knowing the runners would take off. As soon as Clark lifted his leg the runner from second took off and Clark turned and threw to second as Cloquet got the runner out on a run-down, which ended the inning.
Cloquet will play in either Virginia or Ely this Saturday in the district tournament and they are currently sporting a 17-9 record.
The Cloquet VFW team's batting average is .371, while opponents are batting just .221. Leading Cloquet in hitting are Tollerud and Reynolds who are both at .512. There are three others batting over .400 and four other players who are hitting over .350.
