Three former NU baseball players return for tourney

NEW ULM -- Weather permitting, the New Ulm High School Invitational Baseball Tournament will open its first year tonight at both Johnson and Mueller Parks and continue tomorrow in morning and afternoon games.

The the teams competing are the New Ulm Eagles, Lakeville, Park Center and Forest Lake.

Forest Lake, Park Center and Lakeville are coached by former New Ulm High School baseball players Brian Raabe, Jeff Stoll and Mark Zeise.

Opening the tournament tonight at 7:30 at Johnson Park will be New Ulm going against Park Center. Mueller Park will see Forest Lake tangling with Lakeville.

Play continues Saturday with games at 11 a.m. Those will feature New Ulm against Forest Lake at Johnson Park and Park Center against Lakeville at Mueller Park.

At 2 p.m. at Johnson Park, New Ulm meets Lakeville while the 2 p.m. match-up at Mueller Park is Park Center at Forest Lake.

New Ulm comes in as the only unbeaten team at 12-0. They are led in hitting by shortstop Jamie Hoffmann who is hitting an unheard of .630. In 27 at-bats, he has 17 hits and has not struck out this year. Right fielder Brandon Rolloff carries a robust .514 batting average. First baseman Jace Marti is hitting .440.

As a team, the Eagles are hitting .382.

Hoffmann and Rolloff are tied for runs scored with 17. Rolloff is the team RBI leader with 22 with Dusty Fleck second with 17 RBI.

The pitching staff has three, 3-0 pitchers in Bob Wellmann, Dusty Fleck and Tyson Anderson. Wellmann leads the team in strikeouts with 23 in 27 innings.

Fleck and Anderson have ERAs of below 1.00 at 0.41 and 0.46 respectively. Wellmann's ERA is just over one run per game at 1.04.

The FOREST LAKE RANGERS, coached by Brian Raabe, enter the tournament at 7-2. "We feel that we are in one of the toughest conferences in the state in the Suburban East Conference," he said. "We are a good team -- not a great team -- and like any other high school teams, we have some holes that need to be filled."

Raabe said that his team had a six-game winning streak before losing to Mounds View and Woodbury.

Leading the Rangers this year in hitting is shortstop Alex Johnson who "is a good hitter. He is doing a lot of things right. But our pitching has been great, The two games that we have lost, our pitchers have done well. We just haven't hit. That is just part of the nature of the beast."

"When we come to New Ulm, we will be shorthanded -- because we are so close (to first place) in the Suburban East, and we have a chance to win the conference, we have to save some of our best pitchers for (next week's) conference games. We did not know that we would be fighting for a conference title."

Raabe said that his team's pitching "is their strength. That is when we have our best pitchers on the mound.We don't know what we will do for pitching this weekend.

Last year, New Ulm beat Forest Lake 3-0 in the state tournament.

Jeff Stoll's PARK CENTER PIRATES come to New Ulm with 7-4 mark in the Northwest Suburban Conference.

"We are hitting .389 as a team," Stoll said. "Our top hitter is (shortstop) Charlie Zierke who is hitting .457."

"We have decent pitching, but we are playing for a conference title," Stoll said. "We are one game out of first and the team that we are tied with and the team that we are one game behind of we play Wednesday and Thursday of next week."

Stoll said his team "has not faced very good pitching this year. The conference is down this year. We have 10-runned four of our seven teams in the conference."

Stoll said that he possibly has a D-I player in junior center fielder Joe Williams who is batting .424.

"My No. one pitcher -- Kevin Cogwsell, a lefthander -- pitched against New Ulm two years ago and he wants to pitch against them (Friday), so he will."

Mark Zeise's LAKEVILLE PANTHERS ride into New Ulm with a 6-4 mark in the Lake Conference. "We are a solid team." Zeise said. "We have solid pitching but the thing that has killed us is our fielding. We have not had a practice on our high school field . We had one practice, but it was too wet. They built the field on a swamp. We have been going to Elko for our practices. We are behind a little bit on some fundamentals."

"Our team pitching ERA is under two runs a game -- I have a couple of pitchers with one run or less ERA. We lost two 1-0 games in the Lake Conference to Eden Prairie. In one game, our pitcher struck out 14, but their pitcher struck out 13. We have not found a solution at shortstop yet. We had five errors at the shortstop position in the first inning."

John Arlt, who has signed with the University of Minnesota, "is our top player. He is a switch-hitter who plays third, does some catching and also pitches. He has hit clean-up for us since he was a sophomore."

"Nate Soberberg is a top-notch first baseman for us -- he is 6-foot 4, 180 -- a good player. But we lost our top pitcher (Jeremy Shmoe), but he will probably DH for us. He had major surgery."

Zeise said that he has eight games in the next week. "We went to Florida in the early spring. We can't play any Florida (high school) teams down there because they are almost ready for their sectional play by then. They are already almost 18 games into their season. We ended up scrimmaging a lot of our neighbors there Owatonna, Rosemount, Apple Valley, Prior Lake. It is like heading south to play your neighbor."

There are two other former New Ulm High School baseball players who are head baseball coaches in Minnesota. They are Mike Wenninger at Luverne and Kurt Moelter in St. Peter.