Kee baseball team battles sixth-rated Martensdale-St. Mary’s to scoreless tie through five innings before having season ended with 2-0 first-round State Tournament loss
Welcome home event for State Tournament qualifiers ... Members of the Kee baseball team display their scoreboard sign and the State Tournament Participant trophy at a welcome home celebration hosted by the communities of Lansing and New Albin after the team arrived home Tuesday afternoon, July 22 following their 2-0 loss in the opening round of the Class 1A season grand finale to sixth-rated and eventual State Runner-Up Martensdale-St. Mary’s Monday, July 21. Pictured, left to right, are: Front row - Irey Mettille, Trey Cota, Wyatt Henkel, Kyle Mauss, Justin Wagner, Kaeden Weber, Noah Connelly; Back row - Assistant Coach Tyson Cota, Karsen Strong, Assistant Coach Jeff Cota, Jordan Cota, Dalton Mudderman, Brayden Darling, Carter Seitz, Tanner Troendle, Carter Verthein, Conner Winters, Aleks Stankovich, Head Coach Jim Mauss. 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.
Monday, July 21 was not a great day to have a Hawk nickname at the Class 1A State Baseball Tournament at Merchants Park in Carroll, as all three teams with Hawks as their team mascot ended up on the losing end of the final result of their opening-round game in that small school season grand finale.
Although the fifth-seeded Hawks of Kee High School were one of those unfortunate first-round victims, battling through a scoreless five innings before falling by just a 2-0 result to fourth-seeded and sixth-rated Martensdale-St. Mary’s in an early afternoon game, they were not the most unfortunate of those three Hawk squads. Returning as the defending Class 1A State Champion and State Runner-Up from last season’s Class 1A State Tournament, respectively, this year’s second-seeded and third-rated Lynnville-Sully Hawks and top-seeded and top-rated Remsen-St. Mary Hawks were both also knocked out of the tournament right away by the two bottom-seeded teams in the tournament, with defending 1A Runner-Up Remsen-St. Mary having its season ended with just its second loss of the season, 3-1, to eight-seeded and unranked Hillcrest Academy and defending 1A Champion Lynnville-Sully suffering that same fate with just its third loss of the season in a 12-1 mercy-rule loss to seventh-seeded and unranked East Buchanan.
The most unfortunate aspect for the Hawks of Kee was the fact that the highest seeded team that remained in that Class 1A State Tournament field after that July 21 opening round was a third-seeded and fifth-rated St. Ansgar team Kee’s diamond dwellers had defeated by an 8-0 result in mid-June earlier this season. Those Saints joined the Martensdale-St. Mary’s team that had ousted the purple and silver Hawks in continuing to advance on to this year’s Class 1A State Championship game, with St. Ansgar going on to win this year’s Class 1A State Championship with a 4-1 victory over the Blue Devils.
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