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(NewsDakota.com) The look of American Legion baseball in the state of North Dakota will be quite different for the 2014 season, which for some teams starts as soon as next week.
Instead of two different levels of classification, the 54 teams across the state will be broken into three classes: Class AA, A and B. There are also 10 junior teams this season, which consist of players 16 years and younger, all in the AA ranks, and those junior teams will have their own state tournament.
Class AA will consist of Fargo Post 2, Fargo Post 400, West Fargo, Jamestown, Bismarck, Mandan, Dickinson, Williston, Minot, and Grand Forks.
Class A has 12 teams divided into two conferences. The teams in the West Region are Beulah, Bottineau, Velva, Washburn, Watford City, and Makoti. The East Region will feature Casselton, Devils Lake, Grafton, Harvey, Wahpeton, and Valley City. The East Region Tournament will be held in Casselton, and the top four seeds from each Region will meet in Wapheton for the State Tournament.
Class B Baseball will have the remaining 32 teams, and will no longer be divided in “sections”. For example, what was once known as “Section 2” which made up a good portion of the southeastern part of the state will now be known as the Southeast Region and consist of Oakes, LaMoure, Ellendale, Enderlin, Kindred, Galchutt, Fairmount-Hankinson, Kidder County and Lidgerwood.
Two teams from each regional tournament, with the exception of the host region, will advance to the 2014 State Class B Tournament in Langdon, which will run the same time as the A Tournament in Wapheton: July 23-27.
The winners of both tournaments will meet in Wapheton on July 29 to determine the state’s representative in the Midwest Regional this year in Milbank, South Dakota.