By Eric Maki
Community Post

This week was a very good week for local teams as the New Bremen Lady Cardinals, Minster Wildcats and Fort Loramie Redskins all cruised into the regional softball and baseball competition. In addition, numerous track and field athletes secured their spot in regional competitions scheduled for this week as well.

The New Bremen Lady Cardinals secured their tournament position with an 11-0 victory over the Spencerville Bearcats in Wapakoneta Thursday.

"We got a lot of two out hitting tonight," Cardinals head coach Craig Griesdorn said. "We did it in the first inning and then we did it again a couple of innings later."
The Lady Cards will now travel to Huber Heights tonight to take on West-Liberty Salem at 5 p.m.

New Bremen saw more good news, as Maria Staton was named MAC player of the year, and Griesdorn as co-coach of the year. Also making first team all-MAC was Elly Cisco and Stacy Timmerman of New Bremen and Amy Droesch of Marion Local. Second team all-MAC included Julie Prenger of Minster, Kim Droesch of Marion Local and Tilor Rohr and Sara Rutschilling of New Bremen.

Honorable mentions included Minster's Januel Baumer and Abby Knapke; Marion Local's Michelle Fleck and Jessica Kemper; and New Bremen's Kim Thobe, Steph Winner and Kate Wente.

The Minster Wildcats baseball team will face the Fort Loramie Redskins in Huber Heights for the first time this season at 2 p.m. tonight, after a cancelled double header and failure to meet in tournament play.

Minster won their spot in the regional game following their 7-6 victory over the Fort Recovery Indians in Coldwater Friday. The game began with a 7-0 lead going into the bottom of the seventh, but the Indians rebelled and managed a quick six runs, almost ruining the game for the Wildcats in an upset.

"Allan [Heitbrink] threw a great game tonight." Minster head coach Mike Wiss said. "I am not taking anything away from how Allan threw. Even in the seventh inning he was throwing ground balls. It was just a matter of some of those ground balls we didn't make plays on."

The Fort Loramie Redskins secured their spot in competition in a 10-0 run-rule win over Fayetteville. Fort Loramie scored runs in the second, third, fourth and fifth innings on seven hits and went without errors to end the game.

"I am sure [the regional] will be an emotional game," Wiss said. "We are three miles away and haven't played each other this year."

The 'Cats also made an impression in the MAC, as they took numerous all-league awards. Bobby Inskeep and Wiss won player of the year and coach of the year, respectively. Allan Heitbrink, Aaron Heitbrink and Andrew Baumer were named first team all-MAC, while Dan Mueller was named second team all-MAC.

Honorable mentions for the Wildcats included Eric Bernhold, Brian Mueller, Zac Boeke, Jimmy Stechschulte and Alyx Brandewie.

Other local first team all-MAC players include Brad Wendel, Brian Garman and Corey Jutte, New Bremen and Troy Luebke, Chris Stucke and Jake Heitkamp, Marion Local.
Marion Local's Kurt Homan found himself named to the second all-MAC team, while the Flyers' Ben Smith and New Bremen's Matt McCollum and Anthony Moeder were honorable mentions.

Baseball and softball teams and players weren't alone in their victories - local track and field teams and players also saw success this past week at the Minster divisional.
In the women's events, Minster took first with 99 points, followed by New Bremen with 95.5 points and Delphos St. John's with 86 points. Marion Local placed fifth with 60 points.

For the men, the Wildcats finished second to St. Henry with 95.5 points, followed by New Bremen with 80.5 points and Marion Local with 61 points.

Locally, New Bremen's girls and boys 4x800-meter relay teams took first, with times of 9:43.42 and 8:16.56, respectively.

Other first place finishes included Minster's Brigitte Sherman in the girls 1600-meter run, New Bremen's Bryce Bergman in the boys 300-meter hurdles, the Flyers' Dale Bruns in the boys 800-meter run, the Lady 'Cats Bernadette Burke in the girls 3200-meter run, the Wildcats' Kregg Olding in the boys 3200-meter run, Marion Local's boys 4x400-meter relay team and Minster's Andrew Meyer in boys discus and shot put.

Meyer managed to break a 25-year-old meet record, throwing shot put 62'05" for the victory. The throw was 2'4" shy of breaking the current state record.