It’s hard to always predict the way baseball will go.
West Fargo Horace, despite dominating Eastern Dakota Conference opponents for most of the season, did not make it to the Class A baseball state championship game. Instead, the matchup was Fargo South — which had not won a state title since 2011 — against defending champion West Fargo Sheyenne, which had won four titles in the last five years.
South stopped Sheyenne’s reign of terror.
The Bruins beat Sheyenne 6-1 at Corbett Field in Minot in the championship on May 30, getting a complete game from Texas A&M-committed junior Caden Nelson. They won their second ever state baseball title.
Sheyenne had eliminated Devils Lake in the state qualifier round, 4-1, to advance to state in the first place.
Devils Lake went 3-1 against the two teams in the championship game during the regular season, including 2-0 against South. But the Firebirds lost to South in the first round of the region tournament, putting them in a hole that was hard to climb out of.
South actually won both games against Horace during the regular season, but Horace still took the regular-season EDC title.
Horace was upset by West Fargo in the EDC tournament championship. Horace ended up taking third at state, winning 8-3 in a rematch with West Fargo in the third-place game.
The big upset at state came on May 29, with Sheyenne — the regular-season EDC No. 5 seed — winning 2-1 over Horace in the semifinals.
It was a power-on-power matchup. Oregon-committed junior lefty Cason Borchardt, who closed a 5-4 win over Minot North in the quarterfinals the day before, got the start for Horace. He surrendered a two-run homer to North Dakota State-committed senior Hudson Dinger in the first inning.
Dinger was playing through a torn UCL, which prohibited him from pitching but still allowed him to hit and play first base.
The dinger by Dinger was the only real stain on Borchardt’s line. He ended up throwing a complete game, striking out eight while limiting Sheyenne to two runs on four hits.
But Horace scored just one run, on a sacrifice fly by Borchardt in the third inning.
Borchardt made the last out, grounding out to shortstop with the tying run on third base. Sheyenne sophomore pitcher Mason Wickham had a pretty stunning line: He did not record a strikeout, but he allowed just one run on four hits and four walks in a complete game. He threw 97 pitches.
Wickham and the Sheyenne defense silenced a Horace offense that was arguably the deepest in the state.
South, meanwhile, beat Mandan 8-4 in the quarterfinals and West Fargo 11-4 in the semis.
It was an all-EDC semifinals, with each of the four quarterfinal games going to teams from the East Region. Devils Lake went 4-4 against that quartet of teams during the regular season.
South got a complete game from Carson Shiek to beat West Fargo. The Bruins scored five in the first inning and four in the seventh. Nelson went 3-for-5 with a double out of the two-hole.
So the Bruins and Mustangs met on Saturday for all the marbles. Sheyenne went with right-hander Hudson Henrich, who had pitched around baserunners and hard contact to quiet Devils Lake’s offense in the state qualifier round.
Henrich pitched an okay game against South, but he was no match for the hard-throwing Nelson. According to Prep Baseball Dakotas, Nelson was sitting mid-90s early in the game and topped out at 96 mph. Nelson threw a complete game, striking out eight while allowing just a sixth-inning run. He permitted four hits and two walks.
At one point, Nelson appeared to show signs of fatigue. He badly missed with a few pitches, and the coaching staff brought out a bottle of water to the mound. Nelson was able to settle back in and throw a scoreless seventh, striking out the final two batters he faced.
After recording the last out, Nelson flung his glove up in the air, got down on his knees, laid out his arms and roared in celebration while staring up at the sky.
South won 6-1.
The Bruins scored four of their runs in the second inning, with a string of hits aided by a costly throwing error. Henrich still made it through six innings. Similar to his outing against Devils Lake, he was effective without being overpowering. He struck out just one batter, but he limited South to three earned runs while throwing only 72 pitches. He did not issue any walks.
Nelson threw 116 pitches in his gutsy, championship-clinching performance.
Devils Lake, despite going 2-1 against South overall this season, did not have to face Nelson as a pitcher.
There’s no question, though, that the Firebirds were right in the mix with some of the teams who ended up going deep into the state tournament. Devils Lake had to settle for a 12-11 overall record, coming one win short of state for the second time in the last three years.
Quinn Irey, head coach of the third-place Horace Hawks, was named the Class A Baseball Coach of the Year by the North Dakota High School Coaches Association.
Brody Mueller, from fifth-place Minot North, won Class A Baseball Senior Athlete of the Year.
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