‘Something everyone dreams of’ Thompson baseball reflects on state title
THOMPSON, N.D. (KVRR) – The Thompson Tommies came into the weekend looking dominant as ever and continued to play their best ball to take home the crown.
The Tommies finish the year with a team batting average of .341. On the mound the Tommies locked down their opponents’ bats for a 1.26 earned run average.
With the pressure at its highest as they chased their first championship since 2016, the bats caught fire outscoring their opponents 49-16 over their three games in the State Tournament.
Two seed Thompson took on LaMoure-Litchville-Marion Sunday winning 11 to 7 to earn the state championship and send off the senior class with the biggest win of their careers.
“We just kinda did the same things we did all year. I thought we were really prepared going into the Region Tournament. I like where we were at. Obviously took care of business there, so I didn’t think we need to do anything extra special. We should just keep playing our game and keep doing things consistently the way we have in practice and I thought we did that. Older guys stepped up and were leaders and took care of making sure everyone was ready for practice going in and had a game like mentality that we had to get ready for a 3 win weekend and I thought we did that,” Coach Nate Soulis said.
“You see that run differential on the offensive side, but there was a lot of defense stuff that went into that too. We had good pitching this year it was just all around minimal errors. Everything just came together. 2016 watching my brother on that state championship team that was obviously something everyone dreams of and then I was on the 2019 team that took second that was I think the third year in row taking 2nd. And then got COVID kind took ‘20 away from us. We just had independent then last year taking third place it was just getting over that hump my senior season,” Senior pitcher Kyle Odenbach said.
