Central Minnesota Conference Meet Held at Pierz Tonight, 13 All-CMC Awards Earned by B-B-E Tracksters --- Jaguars Baseball Humbles Osakis 14-5

At the 2007 Central Minnesota Conference Track and Field Championships today, held at the Pierz High School sports complex, over 13 all-conference awards were earned by B-B-E track and field squad members. The conditions were sunny throughout most of the event, but for the first hour a ferocious northwest wind bored down on the field, making conditions difficult for all participants. Once it calmed down, near perfect conditions existed for specators and participants at the meet.

One surprising and exciting finish of the night for the B-B-E boys team was in the 4 X 100 Relay, where Aaron Rooney, Joey Gruber, Mac Derichs, and Levi Anderson came through with an impressive first-place finish in a time of 47.6 seconds. They are conference champions.

Full results will appear in next week's Observer and Bonanza Valley Voice. By tomorrow morning, a handful of photos from the meet will be posted on my Jaguars sports photos website (link found at right).

For next week's Sub-Section 5A-18 track and field meet hosted at our high school sports complex, I can already tell you that the time I published in this week's newspapers for the start of the event is wrong...tonight I heard it begins at 2:00 and not 3:00 as I had written. (Tuesday, May 22, at 2:00pm)

In a gritty performance on the road tonight, the Lady Jaguars fastpitch team made it a season sweep over Holdingford when they beat the Huskers 9-3 in their final game of the Central Minnesota Conference season. The Lady Jaguars finish the regular season 7-11 overall and 6-8 in the CMC.

The Lady Jaguars golf team is closer to a Central Minnesota Conference championship than they've ever been, as they have a wide lead over second-place Rockford with five of six meets complete. Today they had their fifth straight CMC win during the meet hosted by Howard Lake-Waverly-Winsted at the golf course in Lester Prairie (ShadowBrooke Golf Course). Whitney Bertram shot a 42 to grab medalist honors. Three other Lady Jaguars were in the Top 10.

The overall CMC standings are: (1) BBE 940 (2) Rockford 993 (3) KEVW 997 (4) Pierz 1,082 (5) Maple Lake 1,088.

When you read next week's Observer or Bonanza Valley Voice, you will hopefully be reading about a CMC Championship in girls golf for B-B-E. Their final meet of the season is Thursday, May 17 at Pierz. Good luck, Lady Jaguars!

Also tonight, in non-conference baseball action, the Jaguars defeated fellow section 5A team Osakis on the road by a score of 14-5. Osakis and B-B-E both have 8-9 overall records. Osakis is also 4-6 in the Prairie Conference. Oddly, all baseball teams in the Prairie play each other three times on the conference schedule. That is set up perhaps because there are only five teams in the Prairie Conference for baseball. Tonight's win was very important in the sense that it gives Coach Montbriand a solid argument for seeding our guys number three at the seeding meeting. Osakis should fall in as the number four seed. The Jaguars have one more game before playoffs, next Tuesday at NL-S (Spicer field), in a JV/Varsity double-header at 5:00 & 7:30, before playoffs will open on Thursday, May 24. The Wildcats are 2-10 in the West Central North Conference and 3-11 overall.

In a Central Minnesota Conference baseball game tonight, defending CMC champion Pierz won a one-run game to stay atop the conference when they defeated Howard Lake-Waverly-Winsted 5-4 in Howard Lake. The Pioneers are 9-1 in the CMC and 10-3 overall.

I want to add another bit of information that somewhat clarifies what I had posted a few days ago, on May 11, about the game the Jaguars baseball team had scheduled with Sauk Centre this Friday (May 18) in Elrosa. They had to back out, and I had joked to a couple people that they probably thought it was in their interest not to get throttled for the second straight year by B-B-E in Elrosa. (In 2006, they lost 5-0 in the last game of the regular season to the Jaguars at Saints Field.) Honestly, even though they started the season 1-9, assuming a win over a bad team is nothing to joke about, especially if you asked our neighbors to the west, the Minnewaska Lakers. The Lakers lost to Sauk Centre last Thursday night, and were 10-1 going into the game, only one game behind St. Cloud Cathedral in the race for the West Central North Conference championship. Their 6-5 loss to Sauk puts their hopes of a WCCN banner in serious jeopardy. It understates the importance of never overlooking anyone on your schedule. The reason Sauk had to back out of their game with B-B-E was because of the move of a conference game to their schedule on May 18...a WCCN double-header at Long Prairie-Grey Eagle. If you think back to the weather we've had over the months of April and May, it's no surprise that Sauk had to re-arrange their regular season schedule in order to fulfill their conference commitments.

Let's hope the next few weeks are full of sunshine and great weather as we can look forward to great success for Jaguars sports teams in baseball, softball, track and field, and golf.

Speaking of which, the Lady Jaguars fastpitch team begins playoffs this Thursday at Osakis at 4:30. They were seeded sixth in Sub-Section 5A-West, with Osakis (8-6) seeded number three. The Lady Jaguars finished the regular season 7-11 overall and 6-8 in the Central Minnesota Conference, not far off from their 7-7 CMC record in 2006. With only one senior on their squad, they have great excitement for future seasons. Before that, however, I expect them to do some damage in the playoffs this season and make an appearance in the sub-section championship game for the first time since 2000. They have to get past Osakis first. Before tonight, the Silverstreaks were 6-7 overall, including 6-5 in the Prairie Conference. They played a 2-14 Royalton team today and ended up winning 17-10 in Royalton. The Royals finish in last place in the Prairie Conference. The Silverstreaks finished 7-5 in the Prairie, good for third place behind Eagle Valley (10-2, Prairie Champs) and Browerville (9-3). So the Silverstreaks have an 7-7 overall record going into playoffs, compared to our Lady Jaguars who are 7-11 overall.

Updated records for Sub-Section 5A-West teams: (In the order of seedings...the records in parentheses are the final regular season records of all teams)
1- Kerkhoven-Murdock-Sunburg (16-2, 14-0 Camden Conference Champions)
2- Browerville (10-4, 9-3 Prairie Conference Runners-Up)
3- Osakis (7-7, 8-4 Prairie Conference 3rd place)
4- Upsala (7-6)
5- Swanville (9-8) (Beat Upsala tonight 18-6!)
6- B-B-E (7-11)
7- St.John's Prep (3-11)
8- Central Christian-Prinsburg (0-10)

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