The town ball postseason is here, and it may be the last time Spring Valley Hawk veterans Scott Sayles and Steven Hensley take the field with the team. With Spring Valley having a lot of young players on the roster, those two have spent the year as vocal leaders to show the rest of the team the ropes. Whether or not the younger players are ready to contribute to wins in the postseason this year remains to be seen, but they had the chance to learn from some of the league’s most experienced players.

“We’re young, we’re scrappy. It’s going to be a tough Regional,” Hawk slugger Blaine Guthrie said. “This was definitely a big transition year. Even after this year, Mr. Scott Sayles is going to be retiring along with Steven Hensley. It was kind of a little bit of a homecoming this weekend to play their last games at the Spring Valley field.

“It’s going to be my job to ultimately find some very good replacements, because those are some big shoes to fill,” Guthrie said.

Spring Valley was placed into the Menomonie Regional against two elite teams. The Hawks will first play Viroqua at 1 p.m. Saturday, then take on the Cadott Red Sox either Saturday or Sunday depending on the Viroqua result.

As of July 26, Viroqua was atop the Mississippi Valley League that has some competitive teams including La Crescent and Holmen, finishing with a 10-3 record. The team scored 73 runs and allowed just 38. Cadott also had a great year at 16-4 in the Chippewa River League to tie at the top with Tilden. Cadott is a hitting powerhouse with 191 league runs scored.

The structure of the postseason is three-team pools, with each team facing each other once. Whichever team wins the pool at the conclusion of the weekend advances to the State Finals eight-team bracket Aug. 14-16. The Hawks reached the quarterfinals a year ago before being knocked out by Wisconsin Rapids.

Spring Valley is no stranger to high-level competition, though, playing in a league with back-to-back State Champion River Falls and a Hudson team that is one of the state’s few squads that can keep up with the Fish.

Ahead of the postseason, the Hawks finished the year with some tune-up game action as well as a game against a Champlin Park team that was one of the few to actually take down the Fish in 2026.

“We scheduled that game on purpose. In order to be the best, you have to play [against] the best,” Guthrie said.

Guthrie mentioned that there are some players on the Hawks who compete collegiately, so he wants Spring Valley to be a team that gets some strong competition in to go along with the fun they have in order to be a bigger draw for players. The team will not have too far to travel for the Menomonie Regional, but they know they will have to be at their best to win the pool.