North Stars get busy at Williston tourney

The Havre North Stars Jamboree was a busy, and productive one for the host North Stars American Legion baseball team.

Now however, the North Stars are just as busy, but a long, long way from Legion Field.

Havre is in Williston, North Dakota, for a tournament that runs through Sunday afternoon, and, according to head coach Dick Fuzesy, it should be a good experience for the North Stars, who went 2-2 in Havre last weekend.

"It will be good to play in this after the jamboree," Fuzesy said. "In that you can really do what you want and here you can mix it up a little bit, too. We have a couple more of these than lots of districts games so we can find out where everyone fits in."

Havre did so in the jamboree at home last weekend, and the North Stars finished strong, winning a pair of games last Sunday. However, things didn't get off to a strong start Thursday in Williston as the North Stars fell 13-0 to Wapeton, North Dakota.

But, Havre has plenty of chances to bounce back in pool play.

Today, the North Stars face Lumsden, North Dakota, before wrapping up pool play with a game against the Miles City Outlaws Saturday morning.

From there, Havre hopes to qualify for the championship bracket of the tournament, but either way, the North Stars will still have games to play Saturday night, and Sunday, and when they're not conference games, the North Stars can use them to continue to gain experience, and fine-tune their lineup.

And, at times, Havre's lineup has been explosive. Jake Sedahl, Jerod Boles and Dylan Carpenter are mainstays in Havre's batting order, and, last weekend at home, senior Jeff Miller really busted out, giving the North Stars are big bat in the cleanup spot.

"That's always the joke is that around the jamboree he (Miller) gets going," Fuzesy said. "And he did last week, he hit around .600 in the tournament but he does that every year it seems like."

Havre has also been getting solid production in recent games from Kennedy McKay, and other young players like leadoff hitter Brendan Garden. And, with more non-conference tournament games upcoming, the North Stars can continue to work on hitting, which they will need to continue to do to help a short-handed pitching rotation in conference games, which resume shortly as well.

And, like Fuzesy said, tournaments like last weekend's jamboree, and the Williston tourney the North Stars are playing in now, are perfect for his club's progression as the season moves on.