Marquette Blues pitcher Hogan Nemetz pitches against the Iron Mountain Gold during their game at Gerard Haley Memorial Field in Marquette on June 13. (Journal file photo by Trinity Carey)

“That’s why we put in the time all year long to go play in these tournaments to get us ready to go further.” — Derek Swajanen, Marquette Blues manager, on his team’s chances at the Legion Class A state tournament

——————

MARQUETTE — Four years ago, the Marquette Blues brought home a state American Legion baseball championship, and this week, they’ll get a chance to achieve that feat again.

Last weekend, the Blues clinched a bid for the Class A state tournament for the first time since 2016 with a runner-up finish at the Zone 5 tourney held in Escanaba and Gladstone.

Head coach Derek Swajanen said it’s been a successful season so far.

“I thought the Legion program overall had a great season,” he said in a phone interview Tuesday. “We didn’t have a Reds (Junior Legion) team last year, so we re-established the Reds and they played a strong 25- to 30-game schedule.

“The Blues program, we accomplished a lot of what we wanted to accomplish. We won the Mid-Pen (Conference), we came in second in the U.P.’s. We wanted to get a state berth and we got that.

“We came in third in a tough Antigo (Wisconsin) Tournament and we came up runner-up down in the Rhinelander (Wisconsin) Tournament. So we had a lot of good, solid accomplishments over the summer. The boys have played phenomenal. We had a solid 21-13 record against some really good competition.”

The season hasn’t been entirely smooth, though, as the Blues as they got off to a slow start offensively, but have looked sharp every since Antigo.

“When we were down in Antigo, we were 0-2 in the first games of the tournament and we’d gotten one hit through five innings on both of the games in the first day,” Swajanen said. “Even though they were close games, I think it was 4-0 and 6-2 or something. They weren’t blowouts.

“Then the kids really buckled down. We refocused. They did a really nice job putting a lot of work into it and since that day, our first loss since that tournament was back in (early) July, was to Gladstone in the U.P. Finals.”

The U.P. title game didn’t go well for Marquette, but Swajanen said a lot of that was due to a lack of “ball luck,” like puck luck in hockey.

As a whole, though, he said that the offense has been solid up and down the batting order and he’s confident in his starting rotation. The Blues will need all of those things to be clicking this week as Swajanen said the Blues will face tough foes downstate.

“It’s going to be really good competition,” he said. “We have a team from Trenton that will be playing and a team from Rosebush that will be playing. When you play these teams down here, you think ‘Oh geez, where’s Rosebush?’

“What happens there is they have a bunch of high schools that they pick from. So they usually pick one general post that’s kind of in the middle as their home post and they take from the high schools around it.

“Same with Trenton. There’s some good, solid teams in the tournament and then in the other half of the bracket, you have Gladwin and Gladstone and Parchment, which is always a perennial team. It’s going to be good competition, but that’s why we put in the time all year long to go play in these tournaments to get us ready to go further.”

When asked if he thinks he has the quality of a program to bring another state title back to Marquette like in 2015, Swajanen was confident, but aware that it won’t be easy.

“The 2015 team was just an exceptional team, but I told the guys from the first practice that this is a team that can win the state tournament,” he said. “When we were down in Menominee for the first game, they looked at Menominee and said these guys are big. We lost to them the first time and then we beat them the last two times. It was the same thing with Gladstone.

“We were like ‘Oh geez, they’re really good.’ They beat us the first game and then we played them in that tournament down in Antigo and beat them 3-1. So it’s a team that’s growing. They got their legs under them now and I’m really proud for the way they’ve kind of flourished and really grown.

“We’ve got some work to do. There’s some good teams, but I told them that this is a team that can win. If we get in the right situation and the right game and we have Blake (Henriksen) left and it’s one game only, I’ll take our odds.

“We’re staying positive and loose. The kids have done everything they need to do. We had a nice practice tonight and did some fundraising. I’m really proud of them and we’ll see what happens.”

The Blues open the tournament against Rosebush at 10 a.m. Thursday and if they win, they’ll play Trenton, which received a first-round bye. The games will be covered live on the radio through RRN Sports and 94.9 FM The Bay.

Ryan Stieg can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 252. His email address is rstieg@miningjournal.net.