The Valmeyer Post 901 Junior American Legion baseball squad advanced to the state tournament with three wins to capture the Fifth Division Tournament title this past weekend at Breese.

Valmeyer will play in Sherrard at 2:15 p.m. Thursday to open state tourney play. Milan Post 569 hosts the tourney, which runs all weekend.

Post 901 opened the division tourney with an 11-1 win over Orient on Thursday. 

Riley McCarthy blasted a two-run triple and scored on a wild pitch in the second inning to put Valmeyer up 5-0. Post 901 added six runs in the fourth inning, the key hits coming from Dustin Crawford and Henry Weber.

Jacob Rowold pitched four solid innings and Gibson Sippel recorded the final three outs in the short-game win.

Next up for Valmeyer was a battle With Breese Red. 

Down 1-0 in the first inning, Rowold walked and scored on McCarthy’s long homer to right center.

And that was all Valmeyer starting pitcher Crawford needed to pick up the 7-1 win for Post 901. Crawford, who went 12-2 on the mound as a sophomore at Waterloo High School this past spring, threw six and two-thirds innings, allowing just the one run on seven hits.

Sippel struck out the final Breese batter.

Post 901 plated four runs in the fourth inning, with John Fausz collecting an RBI hit and Crawford helping himself with a two-run double.

On Sunday, Valmeyer continued to ride solid starting pitching to the division tourney title.

Sippel pitched six shutout innings against Breese Gray and took a 4-0 lead into the final inning. He allowed a leadoff hit in the seventh before being relieved by Rowold. 

Rowold struck out his first batter and the next batter grounded out, but the potential final out reached base on an error. Breese went on to load the bases and scored on a hit batsman to make it 4-1.

Rowold settled down from there, striking out the final batter for the save.

McCarthy had an RBI single in the first inning and the team added insurance runs in the third. Sam Fitzwilliam hit an RBI double to key that rally.

An RBI single by Crawford plated Valmeyer’s fourth and final run of the game.