File photo by Ari Selvey Madelia’s Bryce Borkenhagen (7) leads Madelia in celebration after winning the Section 2A Baseball Tournament against Sleepy Eye on June 4 at Sleepy Eye Ballpark.

MADELIA — Two years ago, the Madelia Blackhawks fell in the Section 2A Baseball Tournament semifinals to Springfield, the eventual Class A state champions.

In last year’s section tournament, Madelia lost against New Ulm Cathedral, who went on to place second at state.

This year, Madelia finally broke through, winning the Section 2A Baseball Tournament and earning the top seed in the Class A State Baseball Tournament. The Blackhawks will face eighth-seeded New York Mills at 4 p.m. Thursday at Joe Faber Field in St. Cloud.

“We’ve got a tremendous group of older boys that have been surrounded by a great support network of parents and different coaches all coming up through their youth,” Madelia head coach Jimmy Kiefer said. “Our starting lineup right now is entirely composed of seniors and juniors, so that always helps in high school sports, when you’re older. All of them have got a lot of varsity experience. This is my third year with the team, and a good percentage of our team has stayed consistent, our starters have stayed consistent over the last three years. Just some nice core guys in that senior group this year.”

Kiefer credits the work that his players have put in over the past few offseasons for the team’s ability to get over the hump this year.

“They’ve worked tremendously hard,” he said. “They sought out a bunch of additional development. The 507 Baseball Academy has been really good for them, and Luke Becker down in Fairmont has offered good fall ball and a bunch of hitting clinic opportunities. The boys, they’re really in to baseball and all the additional development they can get. The summer associations and beyond. It’s just an awesome group of boys that have worked hard to get to this point.”

Madelia enters the state tournament with the most wins among state tournament teams this year with 26.

“Paul Carpenter, our AD, has done a nice job of giving us a good schedule,” Kiefer said. “Spacing things out, and we’ve really benefited from some warm weather. The boys have just played hard and they’ve really molded well to my brand of baseball. They’ve really absorbed it and taken what we teach and coach to heart and bought into our system.”

Those losses against Springfield and Cathedral in the previous two section tournaments taught Kiefer and the rest of the Madelia baseball team valuable lessons on what it takes to be a championship-caliber team.

“In my opinion, we play in one of the most difficult sections in the state, so playing against these other really good teams has helped me develop a lot as a coach,” Kiefer said.

Playing Springfield, we’ve had a couple of really good games in recent years, and against New Ulm Cathedral, getting to coach against those really good teams has taught me a lot about being a good coach and adapting from that.

“Our boys in turn had the same experience … We had key section matchups against them that we lost in the last few years, and they were a really valuable experience for us in really competing against a team that achieved the goal that we wanted to achieve. We got to see what that looked like and just tried our best to model our games off of those teams so that hopefully we can do the same ourselves and get to the state tournament and compete well at it.”

Kiefer also believes that playing in Section 2A the past few years has prepared the team well for the level of competition they will see at state.

“I expect them to respond very well,” he said. “What I’ve been telling them is our section is at that same level. We respect the teams that we play in our section tremendously, and I personally think that there are six teams in our section that could play in this state tournament that could have won other sections in the state. Our section has got a ton of talent in it and a bunch of teams could represent our section well at the state tournament. I think that high level of competition has prepared us really well.”

Madelia isn’t taking its matchup against NYM lightly, despite the difference in seeding and NYM’s 16-10 overall record. Tate Becker is expected to start the game on the mound for the Blackhawks.

“It’s challenging, because we don’t have any common opponents,” Kiefer said. “Geographically, they’re very far away from us, so I haven’t seen a lot about them and don’t know a lot about them. We have our scouting reports, so we know a little bit about them, but it’s such a long season and high school boys change so quickly, one month to the next is so different. We’re not as much focused on the opponent as much as playing our game to the best of our ability.

“Executing our game as well as we can, and we feel like if we can do that — apply consistent offensive pressure, play clean defense and pitch efficiently and compete on every play — we feel like we can have success just playing our own game.”

Kiefer said the team is taking the tournament one game at a time, relying on the lessons its learned over the years to work toward a state championship.

“The seedings, they don’t mean much,” Kiefer said. “All eight teams in the tournament can win it. We’re not looking ahead more than what’s the task at hand right in front of us. I was fortunate enough to be an assistant coach on a Mankato West team that was in a similar spot. We were one of the top-ranked teams in the tournament and we ended up getting second in that tournament. For as talented as that team was — we had a DII All-American for example — every single game was a dogfight. The first round we played a lower seed, but they had a phenomenal pitcher, and every single game came down to the wire. I expect this tournament to be very much the same.”