The Wakefield Post 81 Senior Legion baseball team worked itself into the Area 2 finals to play for a ticket to this weekend's Class C Nebraska American Legion Baseball Tournament at the Hog Yard in Scribner.
The Class C State Tourney will be held in Palmer.After dropping its opening game of the tournament, Wakefield has battled through the consolation bracket to earn the right to play Pender to grab an invitation to the festivities in Palmer.
Wakefield would need to beat Pender twice to advance.
To get to Tuesday night's finals, Post 81 beat the team that initially put them in the consolation bracket in round one with a come from behind 9-5 win over Tekamah-Herman.
"We started the night a little flat," Wakefield coach Julio Sanchez said. "We got a huge lift with a three-run homerun from Jakobe (Mahon) in the third and rode that wave the rest of the way."
Mahon's blast chased home Cade Johnson and Brock Floyd after Tekamah-Herman sprinted to a 4-0 lead in the opening inning.
"We also got an amazing pitching performance from Jesse Lundahl," Sanchez said. "When he came in, he limited the walks and kept the hitters off balance all night - it was a great team win."
After the three-run homer, Wakefield added three in the fourth when Couy Johnson, Dillon Borg and Lundahl scored.
Post 81 went on and added three in the fifth when Cade Johnson, Floyd and Mahon crossed the plate for the second time in the game for the 9-5 win.
Lundahl took it from there.
To get to the revenge game with Tekamah-Herman, Wakefield blasted North Bend Central 11-1.
North Bend scored in the first, but Wakefield countered with seven first-inning runs and never looked back.
"We got the bats going early," Sanchez said. "We had another great day for our pitchers throwing a lot of strikes and our defense backing them up - it was great to see us come together."
Cade Johnson, Floyd, Mahon, Nate Oswald, Lucas Oswald, T.J. Salmon and Couy Johnson all scored in the opening frame to pace Wakefield to the big win and boost Post 81 into the game with T-H.
Wakefield added four in the second when Lucas Oswald, Salmon, Couy Johnson and Gabe Lamprecht crossed the plate and Couy Johnson scored again in the fourth.
After dropping the game to Tekamah-Herman in the opening round of the tournament 12-5, Wakefield started its run to the finals with a 6-0 shutout of Wisner-Pilger.
Lucas Oswald and Salmon scored in the second, while Nate Oswald, Lucas Oswald and Salmon scored in the scored in the fifth.
Floyd had previously scored in third and Wakefield left eight runs on the base paths.
"We had a great pitching performance from a combination of our guys," Sanchez said. Jakobe started and was great then the two that followed were really good - our defense started to pick up which is what we need - pitchers should be able to just throw strikes and let the other eight guys worry about it from there."
More pictures of the first few rounds of the tournament can be found on the Republicans Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/wakef...