Glen Strandberg
Sports Editor

An outstanding week by the Forest Lake Brewers could have really helped their cause, as the club was facing three-straight games against teams that hovered above them in the Metro Minny standings.

There is the flip-side, however, where dropping a league game to a tough opponent would simply move the Brewers further behind teams like Champlin, St. Francis and Soderville.

Co-head coach Adam Gallatin provides the basic summary on what turned out to be a three-game losing streak: “We had a bit of a tough week,” he said. “Although we were in each game, we just could not pull any of them out.”

The most recent defeat was a 7-4 setback to the Soderville Outlaws on Sunday, July 15.

Forest Lake looked to be in great shape in the top of the first inning when they would push three runs across the plate. That great shape would begin to sag in the bottom of the inning when Soderville scored three runs of their own.

While the Brewers offense was wilting, the Outlaws racked up another three runs in the third, and then matched Forest Lake’s single-run effort in the fourth inning.

“I thought we were going to bust out of our offensive slump against Soderville, as we scored three runs in the first,” Gallatin noted. “But they evened it in the bottom of the inning with a three-run homer that may not have landed yet, and it kind of killed our momentum.”

Pitcher Chris Parent went five innings for Forest Lake, getting four strikeouts and five earned runs, before handing the ball over to Brian Welch.

Welch threw three scoreless innings in relief and also had two RBIs on offense.

Dave Gauerke pitched another sound game on Friday night, but a big error and a few dropped balls on defense turned out to be critical in the 7-2 loss to St. Francis.

“And we didn’t hit with runners in scoring position” Gallatin added. “We basically didn’t do anything right, other than get solid pitching.”

Chris Anderson, Eric Zentzis and Nick Carroll each collected two hits on the evening, with Eric Goerdt (.358 BA) and Andrew Pooch scoring the only runs.

Gallatin was really disappointed with the Champlin result, because the 6-1 loss came against the Brewers likely first round match-up in the playoffs.

“It would have been nice to catch them and get home field advantage, but it looks like that won’t be the case,” Gallatin said.

The Brewers coach blamed one bad inning in the Champlin outcome, as the LoGators scored five runs in the fourth to go from a 1-0 deficit to a 5-1 lead. Champlin would tack on one more in the sixth to end the scoring for both teams.

Forest Lake beat Rum River 16-2 on Tuesday, July 17, and then close the regular season with home games against Coon Rapids on Friday night and Ham Lake on Sunday afternoon.

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