Amateur baseball primer: Sunshine League powers set for race to watch
May 22—MITCHELL — Mother's Day weekend marked the unofficial first pitch of the amateur baseball regular season, getting an early start to the summer baseball slate. For the next 10 weeks, ballparks across the state will come to life as clubs begin their annual quest toward the state tournament, which returns to Cadwell Park this year, August 5-16. Here's a league-by-league breakdown of the action from 2025 as a new amateur baseball season enters full swing: Picking up where the 2025 season left off, the Parkston Rays are the defending Class B amateur baseball champions, having rallied to take down the Hartford/Humbolt Gamecocks 10-8 in the title tilt last August.
The Rays club not only made its state tournament debut in its third year but completed a five-game run over 11 days by dispatching three league winners from the Cornbelt, Pony Hills and Sunshine, plus two more Cornbelt foes. Pitcher Jake Helleloid was named the tournament MVP for the Rays, capping a dominant campaign on the mound that saw the powerful right-hander post an 8-0 record over 16 appearances with nine starts. Across 79 1/3 innings, Helleloid had a 1.
235 earned-run average, . 170 batting average against and 129 strikeouts. After winning the District 5B title, Alexandria made a run all the way to the state tournament semifinals before running into the Rays.
Along the way, the Angels took out a fellow Sunshine squad in the Parkston Mudcats in the second round and Cornbelt rival Canova in the quarterfinals. In an early-season showdown of heavyweights between the Rays and Angels, Parkston emerged with an 11-10 victory in 13 innings on Thursday night. The Parkston Mudcats, Platte and Winner/Colome were the remaining Sunshine representation at the state tournament.
Platte, the 2024 tournament runner-up, returned to the quarterfinals, and the Mudcats won their first-round game. Winner/Colome, which topped the regular-season Sunshine standings, fell in a matchup with a fellow perennial power, the Dell Rapids Mudcats, in the opening round, ending a streak of six-straight trips to the quarterfinal round or later for the Pheasants. Corsica came up short against the Parkston Mudcats in the District 5B last-chance game, as Dimock/Emery and Mount Vernon also missed out on the state tournament.
Continue to the original source for the full article.