The Minnesota State High School Baseball Tournament starts Thursday and will feature four Class AA teams at Siebert Field.
Brainerd (21-4) and Rosemount (19-7) will square off at 10 a.m. in the first game, and Grand Rapids (16-6) will face Chaska (15-12) at 1 p.m.
Rosemount will be looking for revenge after losing to Brainerd last season in the state championship game.
The contest promises to be a pitchers dual because both teams boast outstanding senior starters.
Brainerd’s Jeff Barrett is 13-0 in his high school career, including an 8-0 mark this season, and Rosemount’s Dan Hegberg and Tom Laughlin combined this season for a 13-4 record, including 117 strikeouts and a 1.82 earned run average.
Grand Rapids also has two pitchers with impressive statistics. Junior Marc Lane is 6-0 with a .60 ERA, and senior Travis Holte is 6-1 with a 1.41 ERA.
Brainerd catcher Chris Studer leads all players who will be at Siebert Field with a .448 batting average.
In other Class AA action, Minnetonka (21-3) and Cretin-Derham Hall (23-2) will play at 10 a.m., and Osseo (13-12) will battle Mounds View (20-3-1) at 1 p.m. for the right to move on in the tourney. These games will be held at Midway Stadium in St. Paul.
Class A games also start Thursday when Orono (22-3) meets Montevideo (17-7) and Wadena-Deer Creek plays Hermantown at Springers Park in Cold Spring, Minn.
Also, Sauk Center (14-12) will take on Rochester Lourdes (23-4) and Glencoe-Silver Lake (22-2) plays Mankato Loyola (18-6) at Dick Putz Field in St. Cloud, Minn.
Orono is making its first ever state tournament appearance, and Glencoe-Silver Lake is making its first appearance since 1974.

Men’s crew notes
Minnesota’s club crew varsity-four team finished an undefeated season by winning the national championship June 8 in Cincinnati.
The team of Pete Maiser, Paul Pilarski, Todd Beyreuthuer, Matt Rich and coxswain Oliver Chan took first place by finishing the 2,000-meter race in less than seven minutes, beating out second-place San Diego by more than seven seconds.
Minnesota’s first-place finish at the National Collegiate Rowing Championships capped a year in which the team defeated all 76 collegiate boats it faced en route to the title.
This victory came on the heels of another first-place finish June 1 at the Intercollegiate Rowing Association Championships in Camden, N.J. Minnesota finished with a time of six minutes, 21.6 seconds, defeating the U.S. Naval Academy by almost six seconds for the title.
The men’s varsity pairs team didn’t fair as well against Navy. Minnesota finished second behind the Midshipmen at the IRA regatta and placed fifth in the men’s open four race, losing out to Princeton, Temple, Santa Barbara and Navy.
The Minnesota women’s club crew squad took third in the novice women’s four race at the National Collegiate Rowing Championships on June 8, the same day the men’s varsity four team clinched the national championship.
— Ryan Schuster