American Legion Baseball compete to advance to regional tournament

MARION — With practices set to begin Monday for the Iowa prep baseball season, a select group of players have gotten a jump-start on their preparation.

Today, four Iowa teams — Dubuque County, Marion Post 298 Linn-Mar, Moville Post 303 Futures and Swisher Post 671 — will compete in the American Legion Baseball state tournament in hopes of advancing to the regional tournament in August at Fargo, N.D.

“It’s just going out there and playing with my friends,” said Swisher third baseman/right fielder Michael Day, a Cedar Rapids Prairie senior. “Just going out there and competing. It is a lot of fun. … Seeing at-bats, getting ready for the high school season, seeing live pitching and playing with some of my high school teammates. Getting to know them even more before the season starts. Getting to know who their playing styles are.”

American Legion Baseball — a national youth baseball program started by the nation’s largest veterans organization to provide lessons in sportsmanship and citizenship with an emphasis on loyalty, respect for the rules, fair play, courage and physical fitness — has been played by more than 10 million young people since its beginning and is celebrating its 100th year in 2025.

“We have been doing this since 2019 and it has kind of evolved,” Swisher Manager Andy Volz said. “We were just some Prairie kids at first, doing some stuff to get ready for the season. We started having some success and Legion baseball in the past has always been groups of kids and last year was the first year we did it that way.”

In addition to Prairie players, the Swisher team includes students from Cedar Rapids Kennedy, Iowa City High and Marion. Dubuque County has players from the four Dubuque high schools, Cascade and Dyersville Beckman, while the Moville squad consists of a variety of players from northwest Iowa high schools.

Marion — which exclusively consists of Linn-Mar players — will host the state tournament at Linn-Mar High School. Swisher will play Marion at 10 a.m., Dubuque County and Moville will tussle at 12:30 and the winners will meet at 3 for a spot in the regional tournament.

All four teams advanced to the state tournament by winning one of last month’s area tournaments across Iowa.

“A lot of us are really excited,” said Swisher catcher/first baseman Shraden Lechtenberg, another Prairie senior. “We saw what we could do in the area tournament to get to state. Some of us have been on the team from last year and the experience of regionals, it is a great experience. A lot of the guys are really excited for the chance to go.”

Both Day and Lechtenberg are playing for a third American Legion state title in a row. The pair were not only on the regional-qualifying Swisher team from last season, but two years ago they helped Swisher win its regional and advance to the American Legion World Series in Shelby, N.C.

“The depth we have this year, it keeps getting better,” Day said. “All 15 guys can definitely go out there and compete, where a couple of years ago we had some holes. … This year, everybody is all in to make another run at it.”

Comments: dem52314@yahoo.com