The Austin All-Star Eagles 14AAA baseball team competed this past weekend in the Minnesota Baseball Tournament in Lakeville.

The Stars were 6-1 on the weekend and brought home the third place trophy. Austin began tournament play on Friday against Minneapolis and came away with a 6-0 victory. Jason Stoulil was 3-for-4 with a double and an RBI. Brandon Bickell and Alex Ciola collected two hits each in the win.

In the second game of the day Austin took on Elk River and posted a 7-3 win.

Trevor Stevens and Jason Stoulil each collected three hits to lead the attack with Stoulil pounding out two doubles and a triple. Daniel Bollingberg, Brandon Bickell, and Alex Ciola contributed two hits apiece in the win.

In the first game on Saturday Austin took on Rochester and pounded out a 12-6 win. Stoulil collected three hits again to lead the offense with Bickell, Ciola, Nathan Conner, and Dylan Gasner all notching two hits.

The second game on Saturday began bracket play and pitted the local boys against the team from Woodbury.

The young Eagles exploded for 13 runs in the lopsided 13-5 victory. Bickell

and Chris Webber led the attack with three hits each. Bollingberg had two hits and four RBIs with Stevens, Ciola, and Josiah Rohne chipping in with two hits each.

The win put the local team into the quarterfinals of the 40-team tournament on Sunday morning. In a re-match of last year’s MSF State quarterfinal game, the All- Stars were locked in a tight battle with the Lakers from Prior Lake.

With the game tied at 5 and entering the 8th inning, Prior Lake sent out their starting pitcher to the mound. After throwing one pitch to begin the 8th, time was called and the game was awarded to Austin via a forfeit.

“The rules for almost all of our tournaments state pitchers are allowed seven innings per game and 10 innings per day,” Austin head coach Rick Stoulil said. “Pitching in the eighth inning violated the rules and the umpire awarded us the game via forfeit. Not the way we wanted to win but the rules are there

to protect these young guys’ arms.”

The win put the Eagles in the semi-finals against No. 2 seed Wayzata.

The All-Stars suffered a 12-2 defeat to the Trojans.

“They hit every pitcher I put out there,” Stoulil said. “Wayzata went on to win the tournament by ten running Shoreview in the title game. They just got hot bats at the right time and there was nothing we could do to stop them.”

The loss put Austin in the third place game against the #1 seed Eden Prairie Eagles, who had lost a tough 12-10 extra inning game to Shoreview in the other semi-final game.

In another unusual finish, after Eden Prairie’s second batter of the game was accidently hit by a pitch, Eden Prairie forfeited the third place game to Austin. “They evidently had three other players hurt over the weekend and they didn’t have enough players to continue and forfeited the game,” Stoulil said. “I’ve been

around the game a long time and I’m not sure I’ve ever been associated with a day of baseball quite like this one. It was just weird the way things went for us today.”

The Austin All-Star Eagles are now 28-6-1 and play next weekend in the Gopher State Tournament of Champions in Andover.