Baseball Schedule Announced for Ages 13-19

Published by admin on Tue, 06/16/2020 - 3:22pm

13 and Up Milbank Players

to Have Baseball Season

The Milbank Baseball Diamond Association (MBDA) conducted a board meeting last week to decide the fate of youth baseball this summer.

The board voted to have a junior teener team (13-14 year olds), a teener team (15-16), and a legion team (17-19). “These teams will be coached by the parents,” said Darin Mertens, secretary-treasurer of the MBDA. “From tee-ball up to 12 years olds we are not going to have teams this year because of the social distancing. We don’t have enough bodies to keep the kids apart from each other.” There will also be no girls softball.

The first games for the teener and legion teams will be played on Monday, June 22, at Groton. “We have a tentative schedule, and we are still trying to add more games to it,” added Mertens. “We are definitely torn about not having the young kid teams, but we didn’t feel we were able to present them with a safe environment with keeping their hands off of each other and things. It’s difficult for little kids to follow social distancing guidelines.”

The MBDA plans to play a schedule with a format similar to high school basketball. There will be a varsity game and a junior varsity game (Legion and Teener). With the pitching regulations set forth, players who pitch will move where needed. There are eight athletes registered for Legion, 16 for teeners and 13 for junior teeners. “Our biggest challenge has been finding games for the junior teeners,” said Keith Weber. “We will continue to work on completing that schedule.”

Parents with questions should reach out to their child's coach. The Legion coach is Ron Krause, who can be reached at 605-880-5840; teener coach, Scott Hoeke, 605-880-7616, and junior teener coach, Eric Pederson, 605-880-1938.

“We are doing our best to make this work and get the kids some sort of a summer baseball schedule,” added Weber. “We also understand this year will be vastly different from previous years. In past years most games were set as double headers.”

See the schedule in a separate post under the "Sports" tab