Cherry Baseball Enters State With Big-Game Experience

Tigers facing Lac Qui Parle Valley in Quarterfinals

CHERRY, Minn.- Less than three months after Cherry won the MSHSL Boys Basketball Class A Championship, many of those same Tigers will be competing for a state title on the baseball field.

Cherry won the Section 7A title for the first time in 16 years, defeating South Ridge 4-1 on Thursday. At 23-2 overall, the Tigers have won 22 of their last 23 games.

The Tigers are led by several members of their championship-winning basketball team. That includes the Asumas (Isaac, Noah and Isaiah), Noah Sundquist, Mason Heitzman and Carson Brown. Noah Asuma believes their involvement in past state tournament games will only help them this week.

“It definitely helps already having guys on the team with big game experiences.” says Asuma, a sophomore with the Tigers.

“We all just put in a lot of work from basketball to now,” says Sundquist, a junior. “I feel like we just don’t take a day off and even though that we probably want to take a day off, we just never do.”

The Tigers enter the Class A Tournament as the #1 seed and will face Class 3A champions Lac Qui Parle Valley.

“I feel like we always have a target on our back,” says Sundquist. “Especially that what we have created culture-wise, and I just think that a lot of teams would like to get us to lose.”

“We just got to hit ’em before they hit us,” says Asuma, who led the Tigers in scoring in their basketball State Championship game. “Just play clean, play confident and just stay the course and trust that what’s going to happen is going to happen.”

Cherry’s quarterfinal game is scheduled for Thursday in St. Cloud, followed by semifinals on Friday. The Class A Championship will take place on Monday, June 17 at 10 a.m.