File photo by Ari Selvey Hanska’s Ethan Mixdorf (1) fist-bumps team manager Chris Koob (left) after he hits a triple during an exhibition amateur baseball game against New Ulm Tuesday at Johnson Park.

HANSKA — The Hanska Lakers may well be one of the hottest teams going into the Class C Minnesota State Amateur Baseball Tournament this Saturday when they meet the Hawley Hawks in Brownton in a 1:30 p.m. game.

Hanska, the Region 2C champions, come in at 16-8 as they play in their 13th state amateur tournament.

Lakers manager Chris Koob believes that his team is playing their best baseball of the season right now.

“We definitely are,” Koob said. “I think that it was a variety of things that got us going in the right direction. We are a pretty young team, with three guys in our lineup that are in their low to mid 30s and our average age is still only 23 — that is our starting lineup.”

Koob also said that the Lakers made some mid-season changes in their defense that sparked the team.

“We were struggling with our infield defense and we did not have much range in our outfield, so we put some players in different spots,” he said. “We had to get our younger players to play consistent — we made it to state last year with this same corps of players and we started playing better ball around the middle of June.”

Koob said that the biggest change was moving Chris Knowles, who Koob said is the Lakers’ best player, from second base to center field.

“He has great range out there — he is very athletic,” Koob said. “That allowed us to move Jake Finstad to play second base — and it also allowed us to move Derek Wilfahrt from center field to left field.”

Another move that helped was moving Brock Wellmann to their regular catcher.

“He does a great job defensively and calls a good game,” Koob said.

It also had a domino effect with then-catcher Tanner Olson switching to first base.

“He (Olson) has been hitting around .500 for us since the position switch,” Koob said.

Chris Knowles is hitting .416 for the year, with Jake Finstad at .450 (for seven games). Olson’s season batting average is now at .356 and Kevin Larson is hitting .350.

As a team, Hanska is hitting .280.

Aaron Portner and Sam Knowles lead the Lakers’ mound staff.

“Aaron has been our guy,” Koob said. “He started three of our four Region (2C) games — those two have been our horses all year — they each have thrown 60-plus innings for us this season.”

Koob said that there was one game that sparked the late Hanska surge in the 2C tournament.

“We went up and played Watertown and we had some starters missing,” Koob said. “They were a top-ten ranked Class B team and we beat them with a really young lineup — they had most of their starters — and we beat them 6-2. That gave a lot of our younger players confidence.”

Hanska entered the playoffs as the Tomahawks’ No. 5 seed but rolled through to the Region 2C crown.

“We got good pitching,” Koob said. “Got fantastic pitching in all of our games, played good defense, got timely hits. And we bunted a lot — we executed every bunt in the playoffs.”

Koob said that they do not know much about Hawley, the Region 4C runners-up.

“This is their first-ever state tournament and they have only had an amateur team since 2021 and they are very, very young,” Koob said. “They only have two players who are over 23 years old.”

Koob said that first games in the state tournament are the most pressure-packed.

“And we are trying to get a monkey off of our back,” Koob said. “We got second in the state (Class C) in 2009 and this is our eighth time since then are we have not won a game. That first game is pressure -packed no matter who you are.”