Staff photo by Travis Rosenau New Ulm Legion Gold’s Jake Finstad celebrates scoring a run by slapping hands with teammate Caleb Forstner during the DI Sub-State 2 title game against Marshall on Saturday at Johnson Park.

ST. MICHAEL — When the 2025 baseball season started for New Ulm Legion Gold, head coach Curt Forbrook felt that this could be a good year for his team.

“I knew that both high schools had pretty good seasons,” Forbrook said. “I did not know if we would be in this situation (D-I Sub-State 2 champion), but I felt that we could compete.”

And as the season progressed, Forbrook saw this team slowly progress as they hit some bumps in the road along the way.

“Some of that was me experimenting a little bit and getting players in the right places,” he said. “I am a coach who likes to give everyone a chance to prove themselves and earn a spot so some of those growing pains came from giving guys chances. But once we figured it out the kids got more comfortable — got used to playing in certain spots with certain players — and they started meshing towards the end of the regular season.

“Things became more stable — we started cutting down on our errors that made our pitchers get four to five outs an inning.”

After entering the Sub-State 2 tournament as fifth-seeded underdogs last week, the Gold played their way to the championship game against Marshall this past Saturday at Johnson Park, winning 8-6 to advance to this year’s state tournament.

The state tournament begins Thursday at St. Michael. Gold will play Hastings in the first round at 3 p.m. Thursday at St. Michael Varsity Field.

The Gold pitching staff is led by Jake Finstad, who is 4-0 and carries a 3.72 ERA. The right-hander has 33 strikeouts in 29 innings of work. Colin Anderson is 4-1 and has a 2.11 ERA. He has 26 strikeouts.

Dirk Haynes carries a 4-2 mark with a 3.63 ERA and 27 strikeouts.

Kolton Achman is 2-1 with a 3.27 ERA.

Offensively, Gold is hitting .259 as a team and led by Elliot Schabert and his .364 average and team-leading 18 RBIs.

Schabert’s status for the state tournament was unknown as of Monday because of a lower leg injury suffered in Saturday’s game.

Anderson carries a .310 batting average, with Finstad at .278.

While the Gold are not a team that comes in to the state tournament with impressive statistics, they do come in as a team that has learned to win as the season has gone along.

New Ulm came in as the No. 5 seed in Sub-State 2 but got great pitching performances, first from Haynes against fourth-seeded New Prague, and then a stellar showng by Anderson in a 2-1 win over top-seeded Mankato American.

“Haynes performance set the tone for us in the tournament,” Forbrook said. “And the win over American was the big turning point — Anderson threw a tremendous game and the kids really believed that they could win (the tournament).”

Record-wise, New Ulm’s 16-12 mark and team statistics are not going to strike fear into anyone.

“Being an underdog in the state tournament is good for us,” Forbrook said. “But I guarantee that they are going to expect to win — after beating American and Marshall we can beat anybody.”