The Forest Lake American Legion Baseball Team completed an outstanding season July 15th going 18-4 during the regular season and being one of the site winners in the prestigious Gopher Classic. They proceeded on to the sub sections July 19th and a chance to move on to the State Tournament. They went 5-1 beating # 1 seed Stillwater twice and past national champ Tri-City Red once after losing a close game to them earlier in the tournament. Two of their games were played at CHS Field (Saints Stadium) in downtown St. Paul with the next four games at White Bear Lake. The team, after winning the sub section, moved onto the State Tournament along with 15 other American Legion teams to vie for the two berths in the Regional Tournament in Bismarck, ND. The State Tournament was played in Delano and Maple Lake with Forest Lake’s first two games Friday, July 29th in Maple Lake. Forest Lake came out strong with wins against Bemidji (6-2) and Champlin (8-1). Saturday, they faced a tough Maple Grove team and came out on top 6-2 in Delano. Sunday, the two unbeaten teams, Woodbury Blue and Forest Lake, faced off in an epic battle and again Forest Lake prevailed 9-7. This left three teams in the tournament, Forest Lake, Woodbury Blue and this year’s high school champion Wayzata. Woodbury took care of Wayzata Monday morning. This set up a rematch of the previous days unbeaten, and unfortunately, Forest Lake came up short losing 7-3 and taking 2nd place in the State Tournament. Forest Lake’s own, Cameron (Cam) Kline was named the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player. The Regional Tournament in Bismarck, ND, started Wednesday, August 3rd with a game at noon against a tough Rapid City team, a past national champion. Forest Lake lost 10-0 and looked to right the ship Thursday with a game against the Iowa State Champions. Forest Lake came out determined and built up a 4-1 lead only to have Iowa come out with a 6 run inning half way through the game and go on to defeat our boys 8-5 ending an outstanding 2016 Campaign. Forest Lake will have a strong nucleus returning next year as they were the youngest team at Regions and the 2nd youngest at State. Forest Lake is coached by Bruce Bates, assisted by Phil Flater, Brian Raabe and Mike Swenson.

Submitted by Terry Larson, Forest Lake American Legion Post 225