Staff photo by Steve Muscatello New Ulm VFW Silver second baseman William Schabert tags out Mankato’s Nolan Michels as he slides into second during the opening game of the Junior Upper Midwest Classic Thursday at Johnson Park. For more photos of this event go to cu.nujournal.com

NEW ULM — New Ulm VFW Silver successfully avoided getting no-hit in the opening game of the Junior Upper Midwest Classic on Thursday.

But that was about the only positive for Silver, as it lost to Mankato 8-0 in the early game of the classic’s opening doubleheader on Thursday at Johnson Park.

“We had a few errors — we’ve got to clean that up,” Silver coach Matt Swanson said. “Otherwise, we’ve got to make sure to hit the ball — can’t win games if you don’t hit. But we played pretty well as a team.”

Jackson Bode broke the Royals’ no-hitter in the top of the sixth inning with a dribbler that sneaked past the third baseman. Bode was later thrown out in an attempted steal, but Cole Backer and Tony Geiger followed with singles of their own for the only hits of the game for Silver (5-9).

Mankato notched back-to-back hits with one out in the bottom of the first to threaten early, but Silver got out of the inning unscathed with a 4-6-3 double play. However, Mankato scored seven runs in the bottom of the second with four of the base runners advancing on passed balls, one runner advancing on an error and another reaching on a fielder’s choice to tag them as unearned.

This ended Backer’s day on the mound as he took the loss in 1 2/3 innings pitched. Ben Arnoldt came in and pitched 3 1/3 innings before Matt Rieger pitched a 1-2-3 bottom of the sixth.

“These kids are 15 years old, they’re going to get their heads down,” Swanson said. “You’ve just got to make sure they are encouraging each other and staying up on everything. We wanna keep the head high, play hard, have fun.”

Silver plays Maple Grove in its second game of the classic at 4 p.m. Friday at Johnson Park. On Saturday, Silver plays Luverne at 10 a.m. at Mueller before playing Wayzata at 4:30 p.m. at Johnson.

“Glad we fought back and got a few hits at the end there,” Swanson said. “We’ll keep playing hard the rest of the weekend.”

—

NU Silver 000 000 0 — 0 3 2

Mankato 070 010 x — 8 9 1

Backer, Arnoldt (2), Rieger (6) and Helget; Warner, Younge and Keller.

W – Warner (M) 6 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 2 BB, 3 K, 91 pitches

L – Backer (S) 1 2/3 IP, 8 H, 7 R, 1 ER, 0 BB, 0 K, 65 pitches

Leading hitters – NU Silver: Bode 1-2 1 BB; Mankato: Phinney 2-3 1 RBI 1 R 1 BB 2B, Miller 2-3 3 RBI 1 R 1 BB 2B, Clifford 1-1 1 RBI 1 R 1 BB, Vosburg 2-3 1 RBI 2 R 2B.