Sartell And Sauk Rapids-Rice Baseball Each Headed To State

The Sartell Sabres will represent Section 8AAA and the Sauk Rapids-Rice Storm 5AAA in the upcoming state baseball tournament in Jordan. The state tournament begins on Tuesday, June 15th at the Mini Met.

The #5-seeded Storm finished off a string of section tournament upsets by beating #4 seed St. Francis 7-4 Thursday afternoon at Joe Faber Field. The Storm beat the fourth-seeded Fighting Saints twice, top seed Big Lake and second seed Monticello on their way to the state tournament appearance.

In 8AAA, the top-seeded Sabres topped the Rocori Spartans 8-2 at Dick Putz Field. Sartell scored five runs in the bottom of the third inning to pull away for the win.

Eight different Sabres reached base in the win, with Jacob Merrill, Steven Brinkerhoff and Austin Henrichs each having two hits. Tyler Phelps-Hemmesch pitched a complete game for Sartell and allowed two runs on four hits while walking three and striking out three Spartans.

Among the four hits for the Spartans was a solo home run by Brady Linn that made the score 8-2 in the top of the seventh. Connor Clark, who started the game for Rocori and pitched three innings, had a RBI double with two outs in the bottom of the fourth.

The Sabres enter the state tourney with a 21-3 record on the year, while the Storm check in at 9-12. The most recent rankings (from May 20th) have Sartell at #3 in Class AAA while Minnesota-Scores.net's "QRF" rankings has Sartell at #2 before factoring in Thursday's win.