New Ulm Gold prep for Sartell to open state tourney
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NEW ULM -- New Ulm Legion Gold opens their 2026 DI Minnesota State American Legion Baseball Tournament play when they play Sartell Thursday morning at 10 a.m. at Johnson Park.
New Ulm then plays St. Michael Thursday at 6 p.m. at Johnson Park before concluding pool play Friday at 12:30 p.m. against St. Louis Park.
The Gold, 19-10 going into the tournament, are in the Red Pool, which consists of New Ulm, Sartell, St. Louis Park and St. Michael
These four teams will play all of their pool play games at Johnson Park.
The Silver Pool, which consists of Edina, Excelsior Blue, Rochester Nationals and Tri-City Maroon, will play their pool play games down the hill at Mueller Park.
The Blue Pool play, which has teams from Farmington Red, Grand Rapids, Owatonna and the Wayzata Wizards, will play their pool play games at Riverside Park in Springfield, while the Gold pool, consisting of teams from Brainerd, Elk River, Farmington and Marshall, play their Pool Play games at Sleepy Eye Ballpark.
New Ulm head coach Curt Forbrook said that The Gold has played pretty steady baseball all season.
"Our pitching has been consistently our strength all year," Forbrook said. "But we started out the season really hot with our bats for the first third of the season. But that has cooled down a little bit but the pitching has always been there. And lately our defense has been pretty strong."
Leading the Gold on the mound have been Tanner Backer, Hunter Larson, Josh Forstner and Mitchell Hopp.
Backer and Forstner are both 4-1, followed by Larson and Hopp at 3-1.
Offensively, New Ulm enters with a .299 team batting average and are led by Levi Hopp at .394, Larson at .381, Jake Finstad at .377 and Backer at .333.
"We are not necessarily a power-hitting team -- the majority of our hits have been singles." Forbrook said. "We have some doubles power from a some of these players. We are a meat-and-potatoes kind of team."
Forbrook said that his team's defense has turned stronger as the season progressed.
"We had to figure out some positions out, but once we got them figured out we went from two to three errors a game down to one or two and we have had games where we had no errors."
Forbrook feels that the key to all of the games for The Gold is to pitch well.
"And we need to play very good defense and get some timely hitting and score enough runs," he said.
Forbrook said that playing on their home field for a state tournament is huge.
"We have played good at home for most of the season," said Forbrook, who is leaning towards starting the left-handed Backer against Sartell.