G-E-T 16u makes history with state appearance

The G-E-T Post 354 American Legion 16u baseball team made history by charting a path to this year’s state tournament, but their head coach hopes it’s just the beginning of something more for G-E-T baseball writ large.

The Post 354 16u team earned G-E-T legion baseball’s first-ever state appearance at any level with their regional championship earlier this summer. For head coach Brenden Klish, it meant finally getting over the hump after several recent close calls during his legion coaching career.

“This was my fifth year coaching (legion), and in three of the four years prior to this, I’ve been — the game away we lost to go to state,” Klish said. “So, it was a really, really cool experience to get to do it here at G-E-T.”

During their regional tournament in Onalaska, G-E-T downed Holmen 10-5 to open things up before losing to the La Crosse A’s 13-4 in their second game. Now with no margin for error, G-E-T rebounded to beat Onalaska 11-7, then defeated the La Crosse Juniors twice in the final round by scores of 13-3 and 6-1 to claim the regional crown and advance to state.

This year’s 16-Under State Tournament took place at the tail end of July in Beloit, where G-E-T won the very first game of the tourney by blowing past Prairie du Chien 23-9. Brady Hansen led the way for Post 354 by going 4 for 5 with a double, a walk, three RBIs and three runs. Zakary Guenther, Jack Benrud and Chaes Suchla each collected three hits in the victory.

That wound up being G-E-T’s lone win in Beloit, as they lost 7-3 to eventual state champion Wisconsin Rapids Post 9 (a game where Post 354 was ahead 3-1 after three innings) and were eliminated with an 8-5 defeat at the hands of eventual runner-up St. Mary’s Springs Post 454.

Klish coaches G-E-T High School’s junior varsity baseball team and thus had the opportunity to see many of the players make major strides from the start of spring to the end of summer ball. Though the run to state was historic for G-E-T baseball, his hope is that it serves as a launching point for further success rather than simply being a culminating peak.

“Let’s take that and win more conference titles, make deep playoff runs,” Klish said. “Realize that we can’t just be happy we made it once; it’s good. ‘Now let’s go do that at the varsity level’ is the message I gave to them.”