Cubs meet Stars in Class C state opener
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COURTLAND -- For the fourth straight season, the Courtland Cubs are in the Class C Minnesota State Amateur Baseball Tournament and open what they hope is a long tournament run when they meet the Starbuck Stars at 6:30 p.m. Saturday at New Prague's Memorial Park Baseball Stadium.
The Stars, who play in the County Line League, are out of Region 8C and defeated New Munich 5-4 to earn the state trip.
They are led by Austin Ver Steeg, who is their ace and will probably face the Cubs on Saturday.
"We come into the state at 23-7," Cubs manager Chase Meyer said. "And we do not know a lot about Starbuck, but we have a couple of players on our team who played at baseball at Alexandria Tech and potentially [Ver Steeg], who we potentially will face, and from what we have heard he throws pretty hard -- mid to upper 80s, so it will be a good challenge."
When this season started, the Cubs were the preseason's No. 1 team in Class C. Meyer said that after last season and going through the same thing with a target on their back, it feels like his team took a few more lumps this year compared to last.
"But that is one of those things that motivates you and shows that you have to show up every day and back it up," he said. "And this year we played in a couple of tournaments where we faced a couple of Class B teams and Class A teams.
"We know what to expect from our guys and in the playoffs it is all about who gets hot at the right time."
He said that different batters have led the Cubs offense during the season
"I would put Carter Lang at the top of our hitting list right now," Meyer said. "We have the Drill brothers [Jaden and Nolan], who you like to count on in the middle of our order, and we have Jackson Bode sitting at the top of our lineup. We look to those guys to produce a lot of runs.
"We added Andrew Peters, so there was a little bit of figuring out what we can all do and where can we put and place guys and how to make things work and how to make a good team that blends together."
On the mound, Bode has been steady all season.
"He has thrown well in the playoffs, but he does not have the innings that he had last year -- he has been catching a lot more. Josh Giefer threw a good game against Hanska too."
Meyer said that the goal of every team is to get further than they did last year.
"But the big thing is to not look to far ahead and focus on the team across the field from you," he said. "That is where we got into a little bit of trouble last year when we set our sites past the team we were playing and they took advantage of it, so we need to make that adjustment and focus on one game at a time."
While Meyer said that having the state tournament experience is nice, at times it is better not to know what to expect.
"I feel like a lot of players tend to play more tense when they know what the pressure is, but in some of those earlier years it felt more free and it seemed like you were playing with the casino's money," he said. "Now it is show up and prove to everybody why we are here and prove why we are the team that we are. We need one through nine in our lineup coming together -- we need to find a way for every guy in our lineup to be effective in order to win it all."