Red Devils co-op baseball heads to state tourney

All the planning, all the hoping, all the work...and now the first season of high school varsity baseball is almost done for the Noxon-Thompson Falls co-op team in their first year of existence.

This past Thursday in Noxon, the Red Devils pulled out a thrilling 6-5 victory, their third of the season against seven losses.

Next up for the team is the state tournament at Ogren Park in Missoula, the summertime home of the Missoula Paddleheads minor league professional baseball team.

The high school tournament runs this Thursday through Saturday (May 9-11) and features teams from throughout the area like last year’s state champions from Polson.

The team has shown steady improvement throughout the year. They posted two wins against Mission High and another over Troy.

At the beginning of the year it appeared local baseball would include rivalry games between Class B foes Plains and T Falls. Plains, which was expected to have a co-op team with players from Hot Springs like it did last year in the first season of baseball as a sanctioned school sport, never got out of the starting gate this year.

Low player turnout before the season began forced Plains-Hot Springs to drop plans for this year, leaving a hole in the Red Devils’ schedule.

But with strong support from baseball fans in Thompson Falls and Noxon, the co-op was able to play a 10-game regular season schedule, with their home games at Pilgrim Park in Noxon once the snow was removed from the field in late March.

They will return a solid line-up of underclassmen for next year, but first on the agenda is the state tourney in Missoula.

Opponents and game times had not been announced before press time for this week’s Valley Press and Mineral Independent. Check school website calendars for updates and other information.