It is that time of year in American Legion baseball. Postseason play is set to begin for teams across the United States and the Havre Northstars are right in the middle of the fun.
Before embarking on the journey, Northstars coach Patch Wirtzberger spoke to New Media Broadcasters regarding the team’s regular season finale sweep of the Tri-County Cardinals. He said his team’s defense and pitching spotlighted the doubleheader and that could be a building block in the bigger games coming up.
“It was great to see some good things happen,” Wirtzberger said. “I thought our pitching and defense was really good.”
“We weren’t making the mistakes we had been making the previous few weeks and we were able to lean on that and get a couple of wins,” Wirtzberger continued.
“(This can) build a little bit of confidence going into (the) next week,” Wirtzberger said.
Now, the games become bigger, especially in a double-elimination format for the first playoff tournament of the season. Wirtzberger shared why he feels like his team will stand out. He put all his chips on the table in regard to the number of times combined his players have of postseason experience.
“We would definitely be in unfamiliar territory if we were to lose the first game, but this team has more postseason experience than anyone in that field,” Wirtzberger said. “Guys on this team that have been there for two, three, four years, they’ve been to district tournaments, they’ve been to the state tournament, (and) they’ve been to the regional tournament.”
“I’m going to lean on our experience and hope that we did into that,” Wirtzberger continued. “Hopefully, that will give us an advantage.”
At (26-21) and (17-11) in North ‘A’ conference play, Havre will be the No. 3 seed of this weekend’s North ‘A’ District Tournament and will have a rematch with Tri-County. Coach Wirtzberger gave a deeper dive into the opponent, emphasizing familiarity and pointing out the characteristics that the Northstars will need to focus on in order to move ahead in the field.
“Well, we know a lot about them,” Wirtzberger said. “Four matchups this year and all of them have been really good games.”
“(They’re a) good team that can take momentum and run with it really fast if you give it to them,” Wirtzberger continued. “It’s a familiar opponent, but with the results from Sunday, we know that we are capable of winning. Hopefully, we can put it all together.”
The Northstars and Cardinals will battle in Lethbridge for the right to move on in the 2024 North ‘A’ District Tournament. The winner plays the winner of No. 2 Lethbridge and No. 7 Fort Macleod on Friday at 5:15pm and the loser will play the loser of that contest around 11:45am.
