Sport shorts . . . .

By John Fragodt, Sports Reporter

•  Ice out at Pelican Lake — It’s official; ice-out at Pelican Lake was Wednesday, April 26.  We live on the northwest side of Pelican and our bay was ice free two weekends before, but it took until the night of April 26 before the entire lake was ice-free.

I celebrated the occasion by taking my kayak out for a journey around our bay and the next day, I decided to put in the dock.  Let the fun begin!

•  Changes in section alignments — The Minnesota State High School League recently came out with its new section alignments for the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years.  The MSHSL redoes the sections every two years.  We’ll highlight all the new sections sometime this summer, but for now, I thought I’d mention some big changes for MAHS.

Among the big changes are wrestling and track.  The Lakers have been moved from Section 5A wrestling to Section 8AA, which will be a big jump, while the Laker track and field teams will be competing in Section 6A next spring after competing in Section 5A for the past many years.  Some of the new teams in Section 8AA wrestling are Alexandria, Detroit Lakes, Fergus Falls, SC-Melrose, Perham and Thief River Falls.

•  What a great community! — What a great turnout for Officer Owens’ funeral services.  It just goes to show you what a great community we live in.

I’ve been amazed at the great help I’ve received since I’ve been working at the Pope County Tribune.  The coaches, the AD and his staff, MAHS teachers and community members have been so helpful and willing to provide me with information and pictures to help make my transition from working in Benson to working for the Pope County Tribune.

One person I want to thank separately is Holly Kovarik, who has helped provide the PCT with great pictures from cross-country, wrestling and track and field this school year.  In addition, the coaches at MAHS are always more than willing to help me out when needed.  I feel very blessed to be working at the PCT and I’m very thankful to be living in such a great community.

•  It’s going to be a very busy month of sports — With all the postponements and cancellations so far this spring, it’s going to be a very busy May for all the spring sports’ teams.

The Laker baseball team has 15 regular-season games scheduled over the final 22 days of the regular-season; the softball team has 11 games scheduled in 17 days; the boys tennis team has 11 matches and the WCC meet over a 17-day span; the track teams have five meets in 11 days before getting ready for true-team state and sub-sections; the boys golf team has nine meets in 19 days; and the girls golf team has 11 scheduled competitions over the last 19 days of the regular season.

Oh yeah, once all those regular-season games are done, the playoffs are set to begin.  And, it won’t take long as the true-team state track meet is set for Saturday, May 20 at Stillwater, and the opening round of the section softball and boys tennis tourneys is set for Tuesday, May 23.  Go Lakers!

•  State standards bring back memories — I just was looking at the track state standards this week and we’ll run them in the paper in the coming weeks.  The state track standards are used for the section meets.  If a person meets or exceeds the state standard during the section meet, they qualify to state automatically, instead of having to place first or second.  

Every time I look at the state standards, I’m reminded of when I ran track; and it’s not a good memory.  We didn’t have state standards back then.

During my junior year (the spring of 1979) I ran one of my best times in the 110 meter high hurdles during the finals of the region meet.  However, my time of 14.96 earned me third place (second was 14.94) and thus, I missed out on a state berth by two-hundredths of a second.  Oh yeah, did I mention the second place finisher was a heated foe of mine and I was not happy he was going to state and not me since I had beaten him all season.  Even though I was 16 at the time and even though I did advance to state my junior year in the 300 meter hurdles, that’s still one memory I’ve been unable to forget all these years.  

•  Very close competition — The Twins are off to a great start, taking a season series from the Yankees for the first time in several decades.  When the Twins fell to the Yankees last Wednesday afternoon, 12-6, both teams ended the game with 14-11 records.

However, while the Twins were two games up on the Cleveland Guardians in the Central Division, the Yankees found themselves six games behind the Tampa Bay Rays, who were off to a 20-5 start.

Move forward another few days and the Twins have improved to 17-12 overall and have a 3 1/2-game lead over the Guardians while the Yankees have lost three-straight and have fallen to 15-14 overall, eight games back of the Rays.  The Central Division is very week this year with no team besides the Twins better than .500.  However, the Twins better find a way to win their division, because earning one of the three wildcard berths will be very tough with Baltimore (19-9), Toronto (18-10) and Houston (15-13) leading the way.