Legion district tournament begins today

A half-dozen area American Legion baseball teams — the Lewis-Clark Twins, Lewis-Clark Cubs, Moscow Blue Devils, Camas Prairie Zephyrs, Pullman Posse and Whitman County Cougars — will start postseason play this week in search of state berths.

The Twins (5-23) begin a best-of-5 playoff series against the Coeur d’Alene Lumbermen AA at 5 p.m. today in a doubleheader at Coeur d’Alene’s Thorco Field. They were 0-3 in the regular season against the Lumbermen, who are their only league rivals for 2021.

“I think we’re ready,” said L-C coach Kevin Maurer, who successfully guided the Idaho Class 1A high school state champion Genesee Bulldogs in the spring. “I have a lot of belief in our guys. I like their mindset over this past week. I think they’re becoming closer together; our team chemistry’s getting better.

“Coeur d’Alene is an older group, and they have those three wins on us, but it’s a brand new season once you get to the postseason.”

Game 3 will be played at 5 p.m. Saturday at Harris Field, to be followed by Game 4 if neither team has clinched the series with a sweep. In the event the series is tied at 2, Game 5 will be at 5 p.m. Sunday at Thorco Field.

The Blue Devils (18-9) are regular-season league champions for the northern Idaho single-A league and are seeded first in their five-team, double-elimination district tournament, which begins Friday at Lakeland High School in Rathdrum. They play their first game at 5 p.m. against the winner of an 11 a.m. contest between the No. 5 seed Lewis-Clark Cubs (8-22) and the fourth-seeded North Idaho Lakers (14-16).

“If we play Blue Devil baseball, we’ll handle our business,” Moscow coach Stan Mattoon said. “That’s the way we look at it; you can’t worry about what anybody else does. You just have to worry about what we do.”

The last piece of the puzzle for the event’s seeding just came together Wednesday when the Zephyrs (18-8), from the Grangeville area, split a doubleheader with the Northern Lakes Mountaineers of Rathdrum and secured the second seed in the process. Northern Lakes (18-15) had been Moscow’s strongest competition when Legion ball was last in full swing, but Camas Prairie stepped up to stake its own claim this summer.

“It’s what you want to see out of our league,” Mattoon said of the tight race. “I tell people who don’t think our league is competitive that it’s competitive every year; it just changes which teams are competitive.”

The Zephyrs will begin district play by facing the Mountaineers again at 2 p.m. Friday.

“Our hitting’s pretty solid,” Camas Prairie coach David Shears said. “Our pitching has been great throughout the season, really. We go as far as seven and eight deep on the pitching staff. The biggest thing we have to do is shore up our defense; that’s been our achilles. It’s going to be fun.”

In the Spokane American Legion AA tournament, Pullman Posse will face Gonzaga Prep 2 at 5:30 p.m. today at Gonzaga Prep. At the single A level, the Whitman County Cougars play host to Deer Park at 5:30 p.m. today.

Wendt may be contacted at cwendt@lmtribune.com, or (208) 848-2268.