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2025 La Crosse Loggers Baseball There’ s No Place Like Copeland
HRs before signing with the Minnesota Twins as a 5th Round Draft Pick. Coincidentally, Sean Ross( Indiana State) was second in hitting, leading the Mankato MoonDogs all summer with a. 372 average and becoming the League’ s 2022 MVP. Brendan Bobo( Cal-State Fullerton) led the Wisconsin Rapids Rafters and the Northwoods League with 17 Home Runs as the Rafters shattered all NWL regular season win records, going 57-15, and winning both halves of the Great Lakes West Sub-Division. Charlie Condon( University of Georgia), a freshman, led the League in RBI with 68 and hit two Home Runs in the Northwoods League All-Star game at Wisconsin Rapids, leading to MVP honors. On the hill, three pitchers ended the season with 8-0 records. Josh Hewitt( Cal-State Fullerton) Wisconsin Rapids, sophomore Hunter Day( Tarleton State) St. Cloud and junior Jack Habeck( St. Cloud State) Willmar, all turned in perfect performances during the regular season. Habeck was named the NWL Pitcher of the Year and defeated Hunter Day in the initial round of the Northwoods League playoffs in a magnificent pitcher’ s duel.
In the Great Lakes Division, Wisconsin Rapids defeated the Wausau Woodchucks( 2-1) in a hard-fought series before losing to the Kalamazoo Growlers in an exciting 10-inning affair for the Great Lakes Championship. Kalamazoo had previously defeated the Traverse City Pit Spitters( 2-0). Wilmar defeated St. Cloud( 2-0), while Duluth beat Eau Claire( 2-0). Duluth then defeated Wilmar for the Great Plains Championship, but was defeated by the lowest seed in the playoffs, the Kalamazoo Growlers, who took home an unlikely Northwoods League Crown. Long time NWL Manager Cody Piechocki brought home his first Championship after nine years coaching in the League. Manager, Kirk Shrider of the Wisconsin Rapids Rafters was named Manager of the Year honoring his team’ s remarkable 57-win regular season. His pitching coach, and long-time MLB Pitcher, John Halama was named the Northwoods League’ s Coach of the Year.
Following the season, the Canadian border was opened to all Americans, allowing the Thunder Bay Border Cats to return to the Northwoods League for the 2023 Season, joining the new expansion team from Minot, ND as the League will play with 24 teams in its 30th-Anniversary season.
2023 The 30th Anniversary Season of the Northwoods League resulted in the League’ s All-Time Single Season Attendance record with 1,313,916 fans going through the turnstiles. Playing with an all-time high of 24 teams and an All-Star game in the Great Lakes and Great Plains Division’ s, fans were exposed to Northwoods League action like never before.
Playing two divisional All-Star games allowed two premier Northwoods League cities, Bismarck, ND and Traverse City, MI to host games that would have been impossible due to the geographic limitations of attempting to bring all teams to these locations that are well over 1000 miles apart. Both games were featured on ESPNU.
In addition, the League had two of its games broadcast daily on the ESPN + platform averaging 4121 Unique Viewers per game viewing over 65,000 minutes per game. The June 15th game at Green Bay versus Kokomo drew over 22,500 Unique Viewers on the platform. In total, fans viewed over 10,200,000 minutes of Northwoods League action on ESPN + in 2023.
The story on the field was the Willmar Stingers who had the League’ s best record of 51-16 on the season, winning their last 10 games to take both halves in the Great Plains West sub-division. Stingers Manager Freddy Smith was named Manager of the Year by his peers for his efforts. Jack Shaffer of the Bismarck Larks was named Coach of the Year.
When the dust settled, joining Willmar in the playoffs from the Great Plains were the St. Cloud Rox, Eau Claire Express and La Crosse Loggers. In the Great Lakes, it was the Green Bay Rockers, Traverse City Pit Spitters, Kalamazoo Growlers and Madison Mallards.
In the best two of three first rounds it was St. Cloud over Willmar, La Crosse over Eau Claire, Traverse City over Kalamazoo and Green Bay over Madison. Following, in the one game elimination semi-finals, it was St. Cloud knocking off La Crosse in a thrilling 9-8 battle and a 15-14 marathon won by Green Bay at Traverse City. After a day off for travel
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