By Rodney Haas

605 Sports Staff 

SIOUX FALLS — For the past three years, Tea has watched as others celebrated trips to the state tournament, while the Titans sat at home wondering what could’ve been. 

However, coach Tom Babb promised this year was going to be different, and had his team in the cage working on hitting twice a week starting in December. 

The hard work and dedication paid off as the Titans were finally able to get out of their region with a 13-3 win over Baltic and entered this week’s Class B state tournament as the No. 2 seed. 

“After the region game I kept pounding it into them that we are not done,” Babb said. “We came into the season wanting to win a championship. This was our first time making it, so we didn’t know what to expect. We didn’t know how Redfield was our first game and we came out strong and hit the ball. We didn’t know where our next game was going to be. They just came to play every time.”

Tea pounded out eight hits in a 11-1 win over Redfield in Monday’s opener to advance to Tuesday’s semifinal against Dakota Valley, where the Titans took advantage of an error in the eighth inning for a 3-2 win. From there Tea rolled to a 13-2 win over Bon Homme to capture the Class B championship. 

“It’s been a real special year,” said tournament MVP Logan Boom. “We’ve been practicing since early December. The year had it’s ups and downs but we are here at the end.”

Tea will lose four seniors this year, but will return nine juniors and two sophomores to next year’s squad.  

“This group has been playing for three years. We’ve been coming into our Region and we’ve been the No. 1 seed and we get knocked out,” Babb said. “This group of guys battled and they get along. The camaraderie they have is second to none. We don’t have people complaining about playing time. They are a team and they come to play and they are all in. 

“We went into the season knowing we had a team that could get here.”