MITCHELL — Even though the state tournament will be held in Brandon, there will still be amateur baseball at Cadwell Park in 2025.

The inaugural Blarney’s Baseball Classic is set for this Saturday, June 14, and will host six amateur baseball games at Cadwell Park in Mitchell.

The idea for the classic started late last summer when Dakota Wesleyan associate athletic director and head women’s basketball coach Jason Christensen was looking for one more event to raise money for the DWU Teammakers athletic scholarship.

“We have the Final Four event in April, we have our golf tournament in June, and then I started a pickleball tournament in January,” Christensen said on the current fundraisers for DWU Teammakers. “All of those dollars go back to teammakers scholarships.”

Christensen was looking for one more way to raise money for DWU athletes when he reached out to Dimock/Emery Raptors manager Brad Bartscher.

“Ultimately I was trying to come up with four and I talked to Brad one day and asked him ‘Do you think there’d be any traction if we had an amateur classic or something like that,’ ” said Christensen. “If I went out and got sponsors and we could run it kind of like a state amateur tournament but we’d do it in June and do it Father’s Day weekend. Brad chased the teams down, I chased the sponsors down and got permission from the city, and we took it and we ran with it.”

Bartscher immediately agreed to help organize the event, with the 2025 state amateur baseball tournament, it was one way to bring a tournament-style event to Mitchell.

“I thought it was a very good idea,” said Bartscher. “We talked about the tournament being in Brandon this year and thought it was a good idea to have something mini amateur-style or a mini-state tournament at Cadwell Park and get some amateur baseball going in Mitchell and something we want to keep going forward with and try and build on this.”

The first half of Saturday’s action kicks off at 10 a.m. with the Canova Gang taking on the Mount Vernon Mustangs, followed by the Wynot, Nebraska, Expos matching up with the Platte Killer Tomatoes at noon and the Kimball/White Lake Nationals facing the Parkston Devil Rays.

In the evening, Crofton, Nebraska, Bluejays will battle the Alexandria Angels at 4 p.m., the Sioux Falls Brewers take on the Mitchell Aces at 6 p.m., while the Wessington Springs Owls and Raptors close out the inaugural classic at 8 p.m.

The official schedule of the 2025 Blarney's Baseball Classic.

When it came to getting the teams and creating the matchups, Bartscher said it was important to create unique matchups for the local teams.

“We wanted to get some local teams around the Mitchell area, but, we also wanted to reach out to other leagues that aren’t so close to Mitchell and play so that the teams in the Mitchell area get to play kind of uncommon opponents outside of our league so that you get to see what kind of other amateur baseball is out there,” Bartscher said.

Each of the six games Saturday will feature a game sponsor and will have two dollar foul balls courtesy of Harve’s Sport Shop. There will also be 50/50 raffles and bingo during each game.

All proceeds from the classic will go to the DWU Teammakers Scholarship, a fund designed to raise funds for athletic scholarships and strategic investments in the DWU student-athlete experience.

“Kids get money based on academics and then we give them money for their sport, it goes together as one package,” said Christensen. “We can throw teammaker dollars, as we call them, on top of that out of our teammaker fund that we’ve created and so it's just an opportunity for our student athletes that we’re recruiting to be able to compete with other schools when it comes to scholarships.”

And there are already talks of expanding the classic two a two-day event, including teams that couldn’t make it this year due to scheduling conflicts.

“I did have a bunch of interest in teams wanting to play in this in the future,” Bartscher said. “It just didn’t work on their schedule this year. We did have a lot of different teams reach out saying they’d definitely be interested next year if we’re going to keep doing it.”