Cloquet Advances To 7aa Baseball Finals

Wes Vork-NSO

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June 2

Dwight Cadwell-NSO

The Cloquet Lumberjacks split a pair of sectional tournament games on Tuesday, advancing them to the 7AA section finals to be held on Thursday afternoon in Hermantown.

Cloquet opened play on
Tuesday with a 6-5 loss to the Mora Mustangs. This game was a repeat of last year’s section finals. Mora won last season and did the same Tuesday by using timely hitting and capitalizing on several Cloquet miscues. Mora would jump out to a 2-0 lead in the second inning; both runs were unearned following a Cloquet error. The Lumberjacks would score one run in the second inning as well withTyler Tollerud scoring on a double by Dedric Clark.

Mora continued to answer every Cloquet rally with runs in the third, fifth and seventh innings. August Reynolds scored for Cloquet on a sacrifice fly by Clark, which cut the lead again to 3-2. Tollerud scored a Cloquet run in the sixth inning scoring on a single by Tomas Rodgers. The Jacks rallied in the seventh and scored two runs off a Thomas Jezerski double, but Cloquet would strand Jezerski at second as the game ended. The loss meant Cloquet would face the winner of the Two Harbors and Esko match-up Tuesday night.

Esko eliminated the Agates by a score of 2-0 and met Cloquet in the late game at the H in Hermantown. In what turned out to be a pitchers’ duel, it was Cloquet winning by a score of 2-1.
This win advanced the Jacks
to the championship on Thursday afternoon agains Mora. Esko scored their only two runs in the top of the first inning. Dedric Clark then shut down the Eskomos the rest of the way, giving up the one run on two hits, while striking out seven Esko Eskomos.

Cloquet scored two runs in the third inning. Corbin Morse singled, moved to second on a sacrifice by Adam Hanson, and then scored when Dennis Conklin singled. August Reynolds singled in the third inning also to score Conklin. The two runs would be all the Jacks would need. Cloquet had six hits two from Conklin and Jezerski and
one each from Reynolds and Morse.

Thursday’s matchup will be a section championship game, the same as last year where Cloquet ended up falling to Mora 4-2 , while Mora went on to the state tournament.

Dwight Cadwell can be reached at dwight@northlandsportsonline.com