Devils Lake handled Parkston Post 194, a team from South Dakota, in its first game of the 2026 Clark Rotary American Legion Tournament on Friday.
The tournament features 12 teams. Devils Lake is one of only two North Dakota squads in the field, with the other being Lidgerwood/Hankinson. The other 10 are all from South Dakota, with the tournament held in Clark, S.D. Clark is a town of just a little over 1,000 people.
The Storm were the last team in the tournament to play a game. All the other teams had played at least one game already, with some playing two.
Devils Lake (17-7, 1-0 tournament) beat Parkston (15-9, 0-2 tournament) by a score of 7-0 in six innings on Friday.
The Storm lineup unusually had 10 players in it, presumably due to specific rules for this tournament, though the tournament regulations were not publicly accessible anywhere. Ben Larson pitched and hit sixth, while Landon Sundeen DH’ed and hit eighth and Cayden McCarthy played first base and batted 10th.
The 10-batter lineup worked out well for Devils Lake. McCarthy went 2-for-3, including an RBI double in a five-run second inning that ran the score up to 6-0.
Preceding McCarthy’s hit, Parkston hit two straight batters including Fausten Olson, who scored on a wild pitch.
Mason Palmer continued his torrid summer with a double to score McCarthy. Larson added on with a two-out RBI single.
On the mound, Larson uncharacteristically walked five batters and hit another in his first five innings. But he stranded multiple baserunners in each frame, getting through five scoreless on 94 pitches.
The Storm tacked on some insurance with a two-out rally in the sixth. Leadoff hitter Taydon Triepke doubled, and Max Palmer drove him in with a single to right field to make it 7-0.
Larson stayed out for the sixth. He allowed a leadoff single, the fifth hit against him, before getting the next two outs, capped by his fifth strikeout. He threw 107 pitches overall.
Triepke took over to get the final out. Larson moved to third base, and immediately made an error that kept the game alive. Triepke induced a fielder’s choice to end it there.
Most of the games in this tournament have only been six innings.
This was the first of two scheduled games for Devils Lake on Friday, with a 4 p.m. matchup with Vermillion Post 1 (8-9, 1-0 tournament) to follow.