ON TO STATE!!! Kee baseball team breaks three-year State Tournament drought with 8-5 Substate triumph over ninth-rated Mason City Newman
A banner performance takes them where every team wants to be ... Players and coaches of the eighth-rated Kee baseball team display the State Qualifier banner they earned with their 8-5 Class 1A Substate 3 championship victory over ninth-rated Mason City Newman Tuesday, July 15 at the Decorah High School baseball field. Qualifying for the Class 1A State Tournament for the first time since the 2021 season and making their 21st appearance as a program in the summer baseball season grand finale, the baseball Hawks were scheduled to play Monday, July 21 in the opening round of the Class 1A State Tournament at Merchants Park in Carroll as the number-five seed in the eight-team field, facing off against fourth-seeded and sixth-rated Martensdale-St. Mary’s, with the winner of that first-round game playing the winner of the first-round game between top-seeded and top-rated Remsen-St. Mary’s and eighth-seeded and unrated Hillcrest Academy in the 4:30 p.m. Class 1A Semifinals contest Wednesday, July 23, with that semifinals winner then advancing on to the Class 1A State Championship game Friday, July 25 at 5 p.m. Photo by Danielle Potter. View and find out how to purchase this photo and many more by clicking on the Photo Galleries link on this webpage.
Having worked its way through some more recent familiar history with a pair of Class 1A District Tournament victories over fellow Upper Iowa Conference (UIC) foes, the Kee baseball team brought back some even deeper historical familiarity when the Hawks played Mason City Newman in the Class 1A Substate 3 championship game Tuesday, July 15 at the Decorah High School baseball field. The eighth-rated Hawks and ninth-rated Knights had waged war in some pretty classic postseason battles over the years more than a decade ago, including the most recent of those that ended up in a 4-3 Kee loss in Substate play in 2012, among others deep in postseason tournament play.Having not matched up with Newman in any capacity on the ball diamond within the past decade, that lapse hadn’t done much to create any more distance between the two clubs when they renewed their postseason rivalry in their July 15 Substate finale. Each team issued the other three free passes at the plate, Kee benefited from just a 3-2 edge in errors and Newman held the slightest upperhand in hits, 10-9, including a 2-1 margin in homeruns that produced the same number of runs. But the Hawks smacked around a 3-0 advantage in doubles that helped drive in five Kee runs with two outs in the books and had eight of their nine hits come in the only two innings the Hawks scored in to overcome a two-homerun, 2-0 Knight headstart and ultimately claim an 8-5 victory that moved the Hawks further down the postseason trail to every team’s ultimate destination, the State Tournament.
The Hawks entered the Class 1A State Tournament with a 32-10 season record, holding the most wins of any of the Class 1A teams in this season’s grand finale. As the tournament’s number-five seed, they were scheduled to be matched up with the team with the second-most wins of this season’s eight Class 1A State Tournament squads, fourth-seeded Martensdale-St. Mary’s (30-5), Monday, July 21. The winner of Monday’s contest will advance to the Wednesday, July 23 semifinals game at 4:30 p.m. against the winner of top-seeded Remsen St. Mary’s (23-1) and eighth-seeded Hillcrest Academy (17-7), with that Wednesday winner advancing to the Class 1A State Championship game to be played Friday, July 25 at 5 p.m.
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