By Rich Winter

605 Sports

GREGORY — Six years ago when Gregory Post 6 coach Neil Hylla moved to Gregory the first thing he noticed was that Gregory is a football town. 

The second thing he noticed was that Gregory had a beautiful ballpark. After watching some of the youth ages 8-11 Hylla was convinced of the talent in the area. 

“I looked at these kids and their abilities and thought wow they have the potential to really be something as they grow as ball players,” Hylla said. 

While Hylla and other Gregory coaches have been guiding those youth through their respective leagues over the last five years, the communities of Burke and Gregory started working on their home baseball field with long range hopes of someday hosting a state tournament. 

“We have covered seating areas that cover the whole home side,” Bryan Witt, a teener coach and volunteer said. “We have all new nets on the first and third baseline, we’ve moved the batting cages out of the park.” 

The Class B American Legion tournament will be live-streamed at www.liveticket.tv - Courtesy photo

In the last few years Gregory has hosted state junior teener and state teener tournaments. This year Gregory was selected as the host site of the Class B tournament and tournament Director Wade Juracek said that couldn’t have happened without the enormous contributions of many people from the Gregory and Burke communities. 

“We put up new fencing last fall,” Juracek said. “We had a lot of help from the South Central Storm and they helped us last night with some final touches to the bullpens and batting cages.” 

Witt said the whole stadium has been painted and everything is all cleaned up. Over the past few years the field has seen extensive work on the field with cutting lines and redoing the pitcher’s mound several times. 

“We have a really unique atmosphere and we’re trying to highlight that,” Witt said. “We’ve mowed different levels beyond the field so people can sit and watch the games if it gets hot.”

Gregory hosts Platte-Geddes in the late game Friday night at the Class B American Legion state baseball tournament

The magnitude of being chosen as the host site for this year’s tournament is not lost on Hylla. 

“Being able to host a state tournament is the reward for everybody’s hard work,” Hylla said. “We were honored to be selected as the host for this year’s tournament and it is pretty humbling that other people are noticing what we’re doing.” 

Gregory Post 6 enters the tournament with a record of 16-4. The tournament begins Friday morning at 10:00 a.m. with Humboldt/Hartford tangling with Winner/Colome. Following that game Milbank takes on Redfield. 

Evening games include Vermillion vs. Dell Rapids with the nightcap featuring Platte-Geddes vs. Gregory. 

All of those games will be live-streamed at this youtube channel - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtVXpTODGQpXmUhuYyojChQ

Hylla and his Gregory team aren’t satisfied just to be there. 

“I feel like we are right where we need to be,” Hylla said. “We should be competitive against all the teams and we just want to compete and be in every game.”

While the young men on this Gregory team haven’t said how much this tournament means to them, Hylla can tell from their effort that this tournament is a big deal. 

“We’ve had so many kids from my team volunteering and asking to volunteer,” Hylla said. “That is their way of telling us this means a lot to them.”

For Juracek the opportunity to share this state tournament with the community and the younger kids coming up means a great deal. 

“We’ve always had a good tradition of baseball in Gregory,” he said. “It has been kind of a stressful experience to host the state tournament but it will be helpful for our younger kids getting to experience what it’s like to be at a state tournament.”

Members of the Gregory Post 6 team are Ben Witt, Brogan Glover, Bryce Frank, Carsen Klundt, Coy Determan, Gannon Thomas, Gunnar Stephens, Jad Leber, Kade Braun