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The Pirate guys flirted with disaster all game and it finally wound up catching up to them in the seventh inning.

The Pirates fell 5-1 to the Elk Mound Mounders in the sectional semi-final game, giving up four runs in the top of the seventh to end Grantsburg’s remarkable season.

The game was close until then. Both teams scored one run in the sixth inning, then that fateful seventh inning for the Pirates. The leadoff hitter was hit, there were two or three walks and a couple hits in there that combined for four runs in the final frame.

The Mounders (what kind of mascot is that, anyway? Is it some sort of politically correct compromise? If I were a mound I’d be pretty offended) pitched extremely well giving up only four hits and striking out five. Their pitcher was in control most of the game.

The Pirates had won eleven in a row and they had a chance to win the game. They dodged early bullets by throwing two runners out at home… in the first inning! The first was Nolan Hanson to Ben Larson with Larson tagging out the advancing runner. The second came with the bases loaded and the batter bounced it to pitcher Thane Larson who threw it home for the force then Larson gunned it to first baseman Jake Ryan for a rare 1-2-3 double play.

Though the season didn’t end the way the Pirates and their fans would’ve liked to have seen, the team represented their home town well and they deserve our congratulations. They played ball like it should be and they were rewarded with a great season and a trip to Sectionals. Only sixteen teams get to do that every year.

Congrats, Pirates!

Really cool photo courtesy of Marianne Shira

The Grantsburg Pirate baseball team has won eight in a row after beating the Unity Eagles last night, 4-3.

Grantsburg’s Thane Larson had a perfect game going through three innings and a no hitter into the fifth. In that fifth inning Unity scored twice and cut the lead in half, 4-2.

Then the wild top of the seventh came. The Unity runners on second and third first and second were running with the pitch, two outs. The batter gets a solid knock into right center field. One run scores, and the runner from first is on his way. A relay throw from the outfield to second baseman, Austin Eskola first baseman, Jake Ryan to catcher Ben Larson is in time and secures the third out of the inning and a chance at a regional championship against second seed Turtle Lake/Clayton. The game will be at five o’clock tonight (Wednesday, June 3). Tune in to 105.7 WXCX for the action.

The Pirates have now won nine out of their last ten games. Let’s hope they can continue that tonight against a good Turtle Lake/ Clayton team. Grantsburg lost to them the second game of the season, final score 6-2.

I wish I could’ve been there on Saturday when the lady Pirates were able to take a pair from Amery. The first game was a 3-0 shutout the second was a seventh inning come from behind win.

This is exciting to me because Grantsburg is being tested this year… and winning. How can they help but grow together through things like that. I believe that playing these tough games early and pulling them out will do nothing but great things for this team.

The Pirates are now 8-0 on the season. Read more about each game at assistant coach, Steve Johnson’s awesome site.

The baseball team is still struggling in the W/L columns but they are playing some very good teams. The team is now 2-4 after this past weekend’s Prescott tournament. Ben Larson and Jimmy Nelson were honored as all-tournament players.

I will be broadcasting the fastpitch game versus Luck on Thursday and the following week I will be broadcasting the Pirate baseball game against Frederic on the 27th. Tune into 105.7 WXCX to hear the play-by-play!

Here’s the article in the Sentinel.

All five Grantsburg starters make All-conference… what an accomplishment! I don’t know if that has ever happened before (probably) but Grantsburg finished second in the conference. It shows that it was truly a team effort for those guys.

I feel like Siren sort of got snubbed with selections as they had a very good season and I thought that Charlie Brown definitely had a good enough season to warrant an All-conference selection.

I like the fact that Gab Witzany got an honorable mention. She had a good season and really played well at the end of the season.

I think the conference is going to be highly competitive for the next couple years as a lot of the players on this list are sophomores (Morrin, Carley Emery, Ashley Guevara, Michelle Gibbs) and Witzany is a freshman. I might have missed a couple younger players, but that would only strengthen my arguement.

The easy way for me to write about the Grantsburg/Luck boys game tonight would be to copy and paste the post from the first game they played, change some of the names (Jason Jensen to Brennan Olson) and the final score and I could go to bed!

I won’t do that, though.

If you care to listen to the game you can find the archive here.

This game was so highly anticipated and hyped up that it seemed that there could be no way those 10 guys on the court could live up to it.

Wrong!

Over 1000 people witnessed another gut-wrenchingly exciting game which came down to a buzzer-beating shot to win the game by one. This time it was Luck who came away with the victory 57-56 in Grantsburg. Taking that shot was who you might suspect… Brennan Olson (he’s a stud… and I say that in the most manly way possible).

Olson got off to a very slow start, in fact he didn’t score until a few minutes into the second quarter (it was a dunk where he had to knife through 3 people to get to the rim then he threw it down with two hands). He finished the first half with only four points. It looked like Grantsburg had figured him out after he went for 25 in their first meeting, but they hadn’t; Olson ended up with 22.

The boys in purple came out blazing hot hitting jumpers from everywhere, Ben Larson especially, it seemed nobody clad in purple and white could miss. Grantsburg used that sharpshooting to amass a 14 point lead at one point in the third quarter, but conservative play and cold shooting in the fourth quarter spelled doom for the Pirates.

This game also crowned Luck as the winners of the West Lakeland conference. Had Grantsburg not inexplicably lost to the Webster Tigers a couple weeks ago, there would be a two way tie for the conference crown, instead the Cardinals get it outright.

Really, there’s not a lot more to say about this game. If you were not one of the 1000+ people in attendance, you really missed out. The crowd was electric the entire night as probably 900 people witnessed the girls game (which Grantsburg won!) which started at 6:00. There was even overflow seating in the auditorium starting during the girls game. It was an incredible experience.

Casting our gaze towards the playoffs, both of these teams are projected to receive number one seeds. You can read my previous post about the bad draw that Luck is getting (and the great draw Grantsburg will be getting) if you follow this link. Brackets will be finalized on Sunday and I’ll post the as soon as I can.

The Pirates could clash with the Cardinals one more time this year if both teams win their regional. They will meet in Somerset for the Sectional semifinal. I can predict the name of my post after that game, "An epic, part III" The only uncertain thing is the victor. Here’s hoping for just one more game between these two rivals.

No one could’ve seen this coming. The Webster Tigers (4-6, 4-10) came into tonight’s game with three wins  and beat the Grantsburg Pirates (8-1, 14-2) 52-51.

The Pirates held a slim lead heading into the second quarter, but by halftime the Tigers had taken a lead that they wouldn’t relinquish. At one point during the third quarter Webster led by 11. Grantsburg turned it on in the fourth quarter tying the game in the final minute of play at 51-51. Then Adam Baum was fouled with 5.5 seconds left to play; he made the first one and missed the second .

Grantsburg got the rebound and called timeout. They had to go the length of the floor and Ben Larson did just that and had a pretty good look, but his shot fell off the side of the rim and another Grantsburg player grabbed the rebound and missed the layup (I couldn’t see who took the second shot, but I’m sure whoever it was will be replaying it in his mind whenhis head hits the pillow tonight). Grantsburg got two shots off in the final five seconds of play, but no late game heroics this night as Grantsburg is upset by the Webster Tigers: 52-51.

The player of the game for Webster was James Wethern, who has started some games, but came in off the bench tonight. By my count he had 17 points which was the highest for either team.

The question now for the Grantsburg guys is how will they come back from that? Will it be a wake up call or will it affect them negatively? Their next game is against Frederic next Tuesday. We will learn a lot about what this Pirate team has learned from tonight’s game. Frederic is winless in the conference this year. After that game Grantsburg has a non-conference tilt against a good Clayton team and then it’s the rematch with Luck.

That game on the twentieth of February will probably be for the conference title. It should be a great atmosphere in Grantsburg that night.