NEW ULM — In an effort to build the Minnesota Valley Lutheran baseball program, Chargers head baseball coach Micah Degner said that starting a DII American Legion baseball team that will have a home base in Nicollet is a way to get his Chargers players to play summer baseball together.

“This is a way to get a lot of our players — who currently are not playing any summer baseball — to figure out a way to play together.” Degner said. “Some of the players who do play summer baseball are scattered around and playing in different places. So in order to build a program and give players opportunities, we wanted to form a legion team.”

Degner said that the Nicollet American Legion Post is willing to be the name sponsor.

“But MVL is the base school, so as of right now it would only consist of MVL players,” he said. “But in the future if there was a need, we might reach out to neighboring communities like Nicollet who does not have enough players.”

Degner said that starting a DII Legion summer baseball program for the Chargers is huge.

“It is important to get more kids playing competitive baseball,” Degner said. “That was something that we as coaches noticed. We have some talented kids but they have not played enough competitive baseball to know some of the little things — know how fast the game is played and the speed and effort that it takes. So it is huge to get kids playing in the summer and also to play with each other and to play the positions that they are going to possibly play in the spring for high school baseball. That is big.”

Degner said that they will only play a DII schedule.

“Right now we have 10 games on the schedule, but we may add a couple more games as we go along,” he said. “It is a really short schedule for DII. The playoffs for DII start July 6 already so essentially you try and cram in around 12 games or more in a month.”

Degner said that practices will be at MVL after the strength and conditioning things at MVL for all incoming MVL players whether they are playing legion baseball or not.

“It is a program-wide, two mornings a week and maybe some evening ones just for the players who are playing legion baseball.” Degner said.

As far as home games, Degner said that right now he would like to play locally on a field with lights.

“This is huge for the future of our high school baseball program,” Degner said. “One of the big things to is that we get our numbers up and if the incoming eighth and ninth graders see that there is an option for them to play together in the summer and not be the only MVL kid playing on the team, our numbers will continue to grow. I did that when I was in high school — I played summer baseball in St. Peter and went to MVL. Though it was a really good experience for me, it was tough because I was playing with a bunch of kids that played all together in high school and I was the lone kid that was not. So this is big for a number of things especially to build our high school baseball program.”