Fargo Post 2 baseball team makes history

At the beginning of the 2019 summer, a group of 17 boys joined Fargo’s Post 2 Varsity American Legion team, and that would mark the beginning of a long yet rewarding journey for the months ahead.

Post 2 began its journey taking on state in Grand Forks, where they had a clean sweep after playing 5 games and winning them all. After cleaning up at state, the varsity boys were all feeling pretty good heading to Sioux Falls, SD for regionals.

“We had an unreal team this year, so when we went to state we just walked through that,” said Senior Caden Headlee, a center-field on the Post 2 team. To them, winning state was only the beginning, regionals is where it got serious and the boys all knew they were going to have to play hard.

A week later the team traveled to Sioux Falls for the Central Plains regional, where they faced the Minnesota state champions, the Excelsior. Unfortunately for them they lost the first game, but that only pushed them harder. The Varsity team went on to win the next three games putting them back in the tournament and giving them the chance to play in the championship game.

But it wasn’t over there, they were going to have to face the Excelsior. The same team who had won the first game 17-11, and they were going to have to win twice to make it to The American Legion World Series.

“We knew we weren’t going to lose that first game, we had to give ourselves the chance to make it,” said Headlee. And that’s exactly what varsity did, they won their first game 8-0, that gave them the momentum for the second game.

“The second game we had to piece together our pitching, it was going to be difficult,” said Senior Tyler Thrash. The Post 2 Varsity team gave it their all and scoring one last run in the top of the seventh put them ahead and lead them to victory.

“You can hear kids just yelling ‘we did it, we did it’, it was such a surreal feeling,” said Thrash. At that exact moment the Varsity team would be the first North Dakota team to go to ALWS since 1992.

The boys made their way down to North Carolina with similes on their faces, they knew that no matter what happened they were going home proud of what they had accomplished.

Like regionals, they began the tournament with a loss, dampening the boys spirits but they kept at it. Soon enough the team had worked their way back up the bracket making it into the championship game.

“We went into that game with the mindset we were going to give it our all, and then the rain delay happened, and all of our momentum went away,” said Headlee. Unfortunately for the Varsity team they couldn’t make another Sioux Falls miracle happen and they lost in the Championship game. However, the boys did not hang their head.

The Post 2 Varsity team were the first North Dakota team in America Legion history to make it to the ALWS championship game.

“We were all so proud, we had lost that game, but we are going down in the history books at Jack Williams Stadium, and that means a lot,” said Thrash.

Because of the team’s success they were invited to Target Field, on Saturday Sept. 7, where they were able to meet with the Twins and walk on the field.