Photo: Bri Duerre
PIERRE, S.D. — With the regular season in the rearview mirror, 10th-seeded Watertown Post 17 enters Class A super-regional play this week looking to hit the reset button and lock down a spot in the state tournament.
Watertown will travel to Hyde Stadium to take on No. 7 seed Pierre Post 8 for a best-of-three series beginning on Wednesday at noon. Game two will be played Thursday at noon, with a decisive game three to follow 30 minutes later if necessary.
Following a midsummer lull, Head Coach Ryan Neale sees the postseason as a clean slate for his squad to refocus and elevate its level of play.
“The good news is, now it’s postseason baseball time,” Neale said. “I think everybody’s attention span just turns up a notch.”
Post 17 enters the matchup with Pierre aiming to regain the momentum that fueled a strong early-summer run. Watertown put together a solid stretch through June, earning key wins in Omaha and Rapid City alongside a sweep of Sioux Falls East. However, execution turned inconsistent following the July 4 break.
“Kids getting out of their comfort zones and routines a little bit,” Neale said of the recent stretch. “We’ve just been a little bit inconsistent on some things, and thus that’s why we are where we are in our seeding.”
Despite the late-season stumbles, Neale remains confident in his group’s ability to rise to the occasion when tournament pressure builds. Watertown has consistently turned in its strongest performances during high-stakes moments, dating back to the spring high school season.
“We know we’re able to compete with basically everybody in the state,” Neale said. “When the stage has been at its highest moment for this group, we’ve played really well. The capability is there.”
That capability will be tested against a familiar opponent. Pierre swept Post 17 in a July 6 doubleheader in Watertown, dropping the host team 4–3 and 4–1. Seven costly errors and a quiet offense proved to be the undoing for Post 17 in those contests.
“We saw their best punch, they saw ours, and we know we didn’t play very good,” Neale said. “We just weren’t crisp.”
With a trip to Rapid City on the line, Post 17 gets an immediate chance at redemption on Pierre’s home field.
“We have an opportunity to come back and avenge those losses with more at stake,” Neale said. “The stage is set for excitement, and postseason baseball is about to be at its best.”
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