The success of young players will create ‘hard decisions’ for next year’s roster

By Reagan Hoverman

The River Falls High School baseball team received a jolt of confidence head ing into next year’s baseball season after a young, unproven roster knocked ou the top two ranked teams in Wisconsin during the 2022 AA Legion State Tournament to reach Championship Tuesday.

Throughout the 2022 Legion baseball season, River Falls was a middling team that hovered around .500 for a majority of the season. Youthful mistakes cost the team wins early in the summer and as the season progressed, the team began playing better and better before crescendoing in the 2022 play- ous.

The 2022 River Falls Legion Post 121 baseball team was essentially the high school team without a couple of the program’s top players who decided to play club baseball instead of joining the Legion roster.

Because of that, younger players on the HS roster got to play legitimate varsity-caliber innings for the Legion team this summer, gain valuable experience and develop as players throughout the season. While the opening weeks were choppy, players settled in and made strides in their game which led to the deep postseason run at the Legion State Tournament.

In the first two days of the tournament, River Falls defeated #1 ranked Holmen and #2 ranked Rhinelander and eventually rode that momentum to a Championship Tuesday berth on Aug. 2. In defeating those powerhouse programs, River Falls had exhausted its starting pitching and went into Championship Tuesday with none of its four best starters available.

"When you get to day five (Championship Tuesday), pitching depth becomes a pretty important thing,” River Falls head coach Ryan Bishop said. “We had such good, close games with Rhinelander and Holmen that we weren’t able to pull our pitchers before they hit pitch counts. So, our top pitchers were not available for that Tuesday.”

River Falls met Holmen again on Championship Tuesday because of the double-elimination status of the tournament. Holmen had battled through the loser’s bracket and met River Falls in the state semifinal that Tuesday morning with a trip to the state title game on the line.

While River Falls had exhausted starting pitching just to get to Championship Tuesday, Holmen had managed to keep arms fresh and had ace starting pitchers available for the rematch with River Falls.

“We were behind the 8-ball to start with (pitching), that's not an excuse, we've got guys that can throw strikes, but we just ran out of gas a little bit,” Bishop said. “There were teams that had gas left in the tank and they were the last two teams standing.”

Holmen’s stacked roster and fresh pitching arms couldn’t be slowed down in that state semifinal contest. River Falls recorded only three hits in 20 plate appearances against Holmen. The Wildcats couldn’t get on the board while Holmen hung crooked numbers throughout the first four innings which led to a final score of 14-0 and a River Falls defeat.

“They hit the ball well and our defense didn’t play quite as sharp as we needed to,” Bishop said. “They jumped out to a lead right away and we just weren’t able to recover.”

Although River Falls didn’t get to play in the state championship game later that eve- ning, Bishop, the rest of the coaching stau and the players felt like that run through the playou bracket completely changed the out look for the next high school baseball season.

“There is no question that this summer helped build team confidence and some guys were put in positions they maybe wouldn’t have had our whole roster been playing,” Bishop said. “That was a bonus for some of these guys and gave them a chance to mature and develop. It’s only going to help us move forward next year.”

Bishop was candid in talking about the growth of players this summer. Some of the younger players who were on the JV roster or varsity bench last year have developed and because of that, there will potentially be po- sition battles on the varsity field next spring.

“It for sure adds some depth and it makes for some hard decisions next year, I’m not going to lie,” Bishop said. “Hard decisions on players and rosters is a good problem to have for a coaching stau. We will continue to take it day-by-day and have some meetings with the players to talk things over from the summer.”

River Falls went into the 2022 Legion Tournament with an 8-11 record, something clicked, and then knocked ou two of the best teams in the state en route to a Championship Tuesday appearance that galvanized a young roster that will carry the momentum into the 2023 high school season next spring.

River Falls Legion Post 121 players Hayden Bottolfson (18), Zach Cleveland (3), and Eli Condon (15) stand for the national anthem minutes before playing in the 2022 WI AA Legion State Tournament with the ballpark highlighted below. Photo courtesy of River Falls Baseball

The River Falls Legion Post 121 baseball team earned the 2022 Wisconsin American Legion Baseball Tournament Sportsmanship Award for their outstanding team behavior, respect, and overall sportsmanship during the annual Legion tournament. Photo courtesy of River Falls Baseball