UPDATED: Red Wing starts with a win

The Red Wing VFW baseball team started the First District Championship tournament by rallying to defeat the Rochester Spartans 6-2 at the Red Wing Athletic Field on Saturday.

Mike Stegora gave Red Wing an early 1-0 lead with a towering solo home run to right field in the second inning, but Rochester would answer with two runs to take the lead.

Red Wing's half of the fifth inning started with two walks. Those runners, Preston Blaney and Carsten Lampman, moved up to second and third on a balk. Erin Foley knocked in Blaney with a single to tie the game. Zack Garner was hit by a pitch to load the bases for David Goggin. Goggin didn't leave them loaded for long; he ripped a base clearing double in the left-center field gap to give his team a 5-2 lead.

Lampman added an RBI double in the sixth.

Garner pitched a complete-game gem. He gave up only three hits and struck out four.

"We really concentrate on that first pitch strike on every batter," Bohmbach said. "He got ahead of the batters all day long."

Red Wing will play either Stewartville or Winona at 5:30 p.m. today at the Ath. For results on that game, return to www.republican-eagle.com this evening.

Game 2

Red Wing mashed 14 hits en route to an 11-3 victory over Stewartville in the final game of the day.

Red Wing jumped out to a big lead by scoring five runs in the second inning to take a 8-0 lead after three innings. Four of the five second-inning runs came on plays where Stewartville made throwing errors. The final run of that frame came on a Jack Strusz single.

Joel Newman allowed just two hits through four innings. He allowed three runs over the next two innings and was relieved by Strusz in the seventh.

Red Wing will play either Stewartville or Winona at 11:30 a.m. today at the Ath.

Tags: sports, red, vfw, baseball