The seminal plays proved spectacular on Friday for the Fairmont baseball team.
Nate Soelter’s sacrificial bunt opened the sixth inning of seven, Eli Anderson added a two-run triple, and the Cardinals sunk into the Class 2A title game with a 7–0 win over Rousseau in their first state championship. Won in the soaking target field.
Zach Jorgensen, who added an RBI single, played seven scoreless innings for three-time runners-up Fairmont (27-3). After killing the last Rama he pointed out his glove.
“There might be a hole in the ground over there,” said a smiling Jorgensen, the University of Minnesota Football Commit, who allowed just two hits and hit seven.
“Being the first team to do this in Fairmont history is just a crazy experience. Last time in Fairmont uniform, last time doing anything for Fairmont High School, and we got a state championship.
Without a score in the bottom of the sixth, Jorgensen went on before being split like a textbook by Soelter. Fair defensive play was first; However, Tyler Bjarke’s throw was off target, allowing Jorgensen to run around base with the first run of the game.
Gavin Rodding converted an RBI single into two more runs in left field before a sacrificial bunt by Cooper Steber, and a 4–0 lead, when Brady DeMars finished near the stands to get the lead runner in third place.
Fairmont sent 12 batsmen to the plate in the innings.
“The first five innings were very difficult. We were mopping around,” said Anderson, one of the five seniors. “It’s our two biggest words: chemistry and energy. Keep those two things to yourself and we will win the match.”
“A team that fielded about 96 percent this year, a couple of times where we moved the ball around, that’s the difference between finally getting out that kind of big innings for the Fairmont and giving us a chance at the top. One or two Seventh to string together,” said Roseau coach Josh Wakeman.
After the first inning in which he allowed three baserunners to run, including two walk-throughs, Demers, the Rosso starter, sprung through the minimum number of Fairmont hitters over the next three innings. He scattered three hits and scored three runs in 5 2/3 innings. All six runs allowed by him were unearned.
“When he settled in, he was tough, and he kept a really good Fairmont team at bay for the majority of the game,” Wakeman said. “I couldn’t have asked for more from his performance today.”
Playing in the school’s first championship baseball game, unseeded Rousseau (19–7), who scored 21 runs in winning his first two state tournament games, made a pair of blunders, which led to the third in the second and fifth innings. Out on base.
