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VFW Gold advances to Sunday’s bracket play

Staff photo by Steve Muscatello New Ulm VFW Gold’s Teddy Giefer hits the ball during New Ulm’s Junior Upper Midwest Classic game against Hutchinson Saturday at Johnson Park in New Ulm. For more photos of this event go to cu.nujournal.com

NEW ULM — Having already won the Pool A earlier in the day with a 2-1 win over Sleepy Eye, New Ulm VFW Gold rested a few starters against Hutchinson Saturday night.

In the end, Hutchinson used a four-hit pitching performance from Alex Prieve to come away with a 3-1 win over New Ulm.

Braden Zimmermann, making a rare start for Gold, took the loss. He went four innings and was charged with all three runs. He gave up five hits.

Lane Glaser had three of Hutchinson’s five hits. Dan Vandersteeg drove in two runs for Hutchinson.

Zimmermann had double and drove in the lone run for Gold.

New Ulm now plays at 9:30 a.m. on Sunday at Johnson Park against Maple Grove. At noon, Mankato and Osseo will tangle with the title game one-half hour after the completion of the second game.

“Hutch put a good team on the field and their pitcher did well,” New Ulm coach Mike Munce said. “We played pretty loose tonight — we had some fun — and it was a good ballgame.”

Munce said that with his team assured of playing on Championship Sunday, he wanted to save some arms.

“We got some other players in the game,” he said. “We knew that we were the number one seed (in Pool A) so we took it a little easy. The kids played hard and it was a good baseball game.”

Both teams scored a run in the first inning.

New Ulm tallied its run when Josh Seidl singled. Courtesy runner Noah Hauge scored on Zimmermann’s double to right field.

Hutch knotted the game in the bottom of the inning when Lane Glaser doubled, took third on a Tyler Schiller groundout and scored on a Dan Vandersteeg sacrifice fly.

Hutch tacked on another run in the third when Glaser again doubled and later scored on a Vandersteeg base hit.

Hutchinson made it 3-1 in the fifth when Glaser singled and took second on a passed ball. He went to third on a Schiller groundout and came home on an Andrew Kuttner double.

“Braden [Zimmermann] has not pitched a lot for us,” Munce said. “He has made a couple of relief appearances — he is not one of our main starters. We gave him a start and he threw well.”

Earlier in the day, Gold defeated Sleepy Eye 2-1 in eight innings in perhaps the best played game by two teams in the tournament.

Alex Hillesheim got the win for New Ulm. He fanned three and gave up just two hits.

Jace Marotz also pitched well in the loss for Sleepy Eye. Marotz scattered three New Ulm hits. But two of them came off of the bat of Zimmermann and resulted in runs. In the first, Zimmermann singled in Hillesheim and in the eighth, he doubled in Hillesheim.

Sleepy Eye’s lone run came in the fifth when Landon Strong singled and later scored on a Hillesheim error.

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