Round one of the Section 1A baseball tournament lasted almost 12 hours this past Saturday in Rochester. If the tournament was in the Riverland complex at Austin, you could get off about 12 games in those 12 hours.

But at Hudson Field, only four games were played over that time span, which meant the Rebels had to wait nearly six hours to play thier second contest after winning their first game, which started at 10 a.m.

While it is good to give teams a break to get some time to eat and refocus, I think we’ll all agree that a six-hour wait is far to long to stay in ‘game mode.’

Concentration begins to fade and bodies begin to tire after too much time in the sun and the challenge begins to be more of staying awake then staying focused.

After watching Southland beat Hayfield 8-1, I don’t think the delay had much of an impact on the game. But that doensn’t mean it won’t in the future.

So, while watching Wabasha/Kellogg and Chatfield battle it out in an elimination game I thought of at least one solution — besides moving the tourney to Austin — that could make things easier.

The winners bracket game should be played before the losers bracket game on Saturday. Why should the top-seeded team have to wait more than any other team has to all day? There may have been a complaint from Hayfield having to play right after a victory — but it still would’ve had about a half hour to prepare for its game.

Another thing the move would help is in case of weather. As clouds creeped up on Saturday all I could think of was the game being rescheduled for Monday and the teams having to make an extra trip to Rochester.

Why should the teams who won their first game be punished and have to play on three seperate days? I don’t know and I guess there are people smarter than me running these things.