Thank God for Caribou Coffee being open. I'm well-infused with caffeine now. Got a nice breakfast too. DeToy's used to be open on Memorial Day morning, as I recall, but no more. Perhaps it's a hushed-up secret that Morris is not doing well when it comes to hospitality establishments or "amenities," the term used by college campus proponents when talking about a town's assets.
Amenities? Let's hush that up please.
High school sports is not quiet on Memorial Day weekend. Our softball team was quite active on Saturday. Not one but two games, both in the post-season. This comes post-graduation. I have to fight a little bit of depression this time of year. For more years than I could even count, I covered for the Morris newspaper the Friday night graduation, the Sunday Chokio-Alberta graduation in Alberta and then the Memorial Day program. All that ended for me abruptly in 2006.
I left the paper under great duress in June of that year, June 2 to be exact. Of course it was an involuntary departure. I won't argue that with anyone. Many of you will get my drift, without requiring explanation. Human beings can be so heartless. Be that as it may, I have the online world still available where I can report about MACA school activities. Especially sports.
So on this Memorial Day weekend of 2023 - where does the time go? - I can report that MACA softball held its own Saturday against those southern Minnesota teams that so often have been a thorn in our side. We played two one-run games, winning one, dropping the other. We're in a double-elimination situation. Double-elimination can be complicated for a lot of people, including me!
So we lost to Jackson County Central and then defeated Windom. Action will resume on Tuesday.
Let's start here with the win over Windom, score of 5-4. The site was Marshall, a distance too far away in my opinion. So much of the section-level action these days requires a trip south. Can we hope the day comes when some of this will shift (back) to Morris?
Brianna Marty was a hero in the Windom game. She socked a double that cleared the bases. Kortney Sanasack made noise with the bat with a home run. Marty's clutch hit put the orange and black up by a run, 3-2. The Sanasack round-tripper made the score 5-3. We held off Windom the rest of the way.
Has the Stevens County Times reported on the game yet, in any way, shape or form? Can some people maybe give me some credit? I mean, why not?
I can report that Haley Kill pitched 5.2 innings. Nora Boyle's pitching arm was called on for the conclusion. The win pushed us up to 20 wins on the season. Someday coach Mary Holmberg will retire with a win total that the late Willie Martin would describe as "astronomical."
Windom is known as the "Eagles." Their Anya Nielson fanned 12 batters.
Jackson County Central 5, Tigers 4
This game went nine innings. The bottom of the ninth saw Mady Wachal of JCC hit an RBI single. Brett Miller used the term "walk-off win" for the JCC Huskies. Marshall has what they call a "softball complex." I'm willing to wager it's a higher-quality place than what we have in Morris.
The Tigers were dealt heartbreak in the JCC game. My goodness, we were leading 4-3 in the seventh and just a mere one strike away from finishing things off. But Alexis O'Reilly delivered a run-scoring single to left. Bring on extra innings!
Lauren Hottovy supplied a game highlight for the Tigers, as she connected for a two-run inside-the-park home run. Brett Miller tells us that Brianna Marty and Kenzie Anderson each delivered an RBI single. Nora Boyle was tagged with the pitching loss.
JCC had the kind of pitching we have come to expect from those southern Minnesota teams. Husky Hadley Wachal fanned 20 batters over nine innings. Husky O'Reilly had a perfect four-for-four boxscore line.
Addendum: A bittersweet Memorial Day weekend for yours truly. I went out to the cemetery Saturday to touch up our family monument, wipe off any bird excrement etc. But I noticed that the people who put out the veterans flags missed us! We have one of those little cement circles that has a hole in it for a flag. They just didn't see it.
My late father was a lieutenant in the Navy in WWII, the Pacific theater. We all make mistakes. I'm not pointing fingers. I'll make up for the oversight by running again a photo of my father with his crew in WWII. He's at right in the photo below, wearing the special uniform. His name was Ralph. How wonderful if we could know the names and hometowns of all the other guys in this photo! The crew was assigned to guard a merchant vessel, an oil tanker.
I wish my father had gotten involved in veterans service organizations in Morris. He simply chose not to. When I first started with the Morris newspaper there was a Memorial Day parade that used main street (Atlantic Avenue). I remember the "VFW junior unit."
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com
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