Parkston claims Class B state teener baseball title on its home field

Aug. 6—PARKSTON, S.D. — The Parkston baseball team added to the town's storied history of state championships on Sunday night, defeating Alexandria 14-4 in six innings to claim the South Dakota VFW 16-and-under Class B teener championship on their home field at The Pond.

With the hometown team already up 1-0, the game found another gear in the second inning, when both teams scored four times. But Parkston continued to score from there, adding two runs in the third, one in the fourth, four in the fifth and two more to end the game early in the sixth frame. Parkston outhit the Angels 13-4 in the game, and finishes the season at 22-8.

Kolter Kramer threw five strong innings and helped lead an offensive effort that saw Parkston pound out 13 hits and score in every inning. Kramer allowed three hits and four runs (three earned) with four strikeouts in five innings. Maddux Brissette pitched a scoreless sixth inning for Parkston. On offense, Kramer had four RBIs, two hits and two runs scored.

Also for Parkston, Carter Sommer finished 3-for-4 with three runs scored, while Kash Neugebauer finished with a home run. James Deckert drove in three runs and had two hits, and Gage Jodozi had two hits and two runs scored. The top four hitters in the Parkston order — Sommer, Deckert, Kramer and Brissette — finished a combined 9-for-16 with nine runs scored and nine RBIs.

The Angels were kept to four hits, while Tye Hernandez drove in a pair of runs in the second inning. Will Jarding, Camden Warnke and Brayden Bahmuller also had hits for Alexandria.

Ben Wilber took the loss for the Angels, throwing two innings and allowing seven hits, six earned runs and striking out three, while Weston Kayser and Sutton Dewald also came in to pitch, allowing a combined six hits and seven runs (five earned).

While The Pond has an artificial turf surface in parts of the infield, manual labor was necessary on Sunday morning to get the field playable after more than an inch of rain fell in Parkston overnight, as volunteers and some players scooped water into buckets to get the outfield playable. That effort was one of the reasons Mount Vernon/Plankinton won the tournament's sportsmanship award, as the Titans helped ready the playing surface.

Tyndall won a marathon third-place game by a score of 6-5 over Scotland/Menno in 10 innings. Steven Neth had an RBI single with the bases loaded to earn the walk-off win, one of three hits he had on the game. MVP claimed fifth place in Sunday's first game, an 11-1 win over Canova.

In the semifinals on Saturday, Alexandria defeated Scotland/Menno 6-4, and Parkston won the other semifinal matchup, an 11-4 win over Tyndall.

Parkston won its Friday quarterfinal game by a score of 2-1 over Canova. Other quarterfinal scores included: Alexandria 8, MVP 7; Scotland/Menno 7, Elkton 4; and Tyndall 10, Hamlin 0.