Larry Werner

I’ve always prided myself in doing things differently.

When I graduated from Michigan State University in 1969, thousands of people were moving from places like Kentucky to take jobs in Michigan’s auto plants. I left Michigan to take a job as a reporter in Kentucky.

In the newspaper business, the conventional career path would be to start with a weekly newspaper, get a job with a daily and then retire to a life of golf, fishing or hanging out in the neighborhood coffee shop. For me, it went this way: Spend 38 years working for daily newspapers, retire, and then spend four years working for weeklies.

Since January of 2007, following my retirement from the Star Tribune and eight long months of retirement, I’ve had the privilege of serving as editor and general manager of Thisweek Newspapers and the Dakota County Tribune. After the acquisition of the Minnesota Sun papers by ECM Publishers, we merged competing Dakota County papers into Sun Thisweek. Beginning next week, Sun Thisweek and the Tribune will be managed by Sun Group General Manager Jeff Coolman.

I will be moving to ECM’s Coon Rapids headquarters in a new position called director of news.

As I look forward with excitement to this new challenge of leading ECM’s editors and writers, I look back with some sadness on the people, places and events that have been part of my life since 1999. That was the year I moved with my wife and son from Edina to Lakeville. During my previous 15 years in Minnesota, I hadn’t spent much time south of the river, but shortly after Ann and I married in 1995, she began talking about heading south.

Ann is a Zweber – one of those names that cause heads to nod with familiarity when mentioned down here. There are lots of Zwebers in Dakota County. One of them, her father, LeRoy, was a dairy farmer and then director of buildings and grounds for the Lakeville schools. After LeRoy died in 1996, just as the family was turning the dairy farm into a golf course, we decided we should move closer to her widowed mother and the family business. Her brother, Mark, lost his wife to cancer in 1997, and Ann wanted to be more available to him as he raised his two young boys.

So we moved to a condo near downtown Lakeville, and one of the first things I noticed was the local newspaper office. Even though I was still working for the Star Tribune, I would romanticize about becoming editor of Thisweek and telling the interesting and important stories about this  land south of the Minnesota River. Magically, ECM advertised for a general manager to run its Dakota County papers shortly after I retired from the Star Tribune in June of 2007. In January of 2008, I started at Thisweek’s Burnsville office.

The Lakeville office had been closed by then in a cost-cutting move, and Mainstreet After Hours, a wine bar, now operates in that Lakeville space, adjacent to Mainstreet Coffee Cafe.

I’ve had a ball putting out newspapers for Lakeville and Farmington, Burnsville and Eagan, Apple Valley and Rosemount, and turning the 128-year-old Tribune into a Business Weekly. I love local news, and our Dakota County communities have provided us with a lot of opportunity to tell great stories about your neighbors, your city councils, your schools and town characters. We’ve written stories about growth and recession. And we’ve provided local businesses with a means for telling customers about their products and services.

Not every day has been a bowl of cherries. Facing a recession and intense competition from other newspapers and the Internet, we’ve had to spend way too much of our energy cutting expenses. In March, we moved from Burnsville to smaller, less expensive space in Apple Valley. And later the same month, we merged the Sun Current and Thisweek papers into a paper called Sun Thisweek. I’m proud to report Sun Thisweek is exceeding expectations as a news and advertising medium.

It seemed like a good time to retire again. I’ll be 65 in July. But my boss, ECM President Marge Winkelman, offered me an office at the ECM Center in Coon Rapids, where I’ll be involved with improving the reporting, writing and editing done by the company’s 84 journalists. I’ll be working closely with Keith Anderson, director of news for the Sun Group, who will lead our journalists in Dakota County.

Our much larger company now delivers newspapers to about 700,000 homes throughout Minnesota. I appreciate the opportunity to work with a growing news company to serve readers with stories that inform and entertain.

Having moved back north of the river to be near my four grandchildren and Ann’s work at the University of Minnesota, I spend less of my free time at the Lakeville Area Arts Center or at the arts centers in Burnsville and Rosemount. And since I’ll be working in Coon Rapids with ECM’s northern newspapers, you won’t see me as much at my favorite Dakota County lunch places – the Valley Diner in Apple Valley, Jo Jo’s Rise & Wine in Burnsville and, of course, Mainstreet Coffee Cafe in Lakeville.

I’ll be hanging out at coffee shops in other communities where ECM has papers – such towns as Anoka, Milaca and Princeton, the place our company was started by former Gov. Elmer Andersen 35 years ago.

It’s likely I’ll use this space for stories from those places up north. So you’ll hear from me on this page.

I’ll miss south of the river, which I’ve named “The Third City,” after Minneapolis and St. Paul. And I’ll miss our new offices in Apple Valley, where Managing Editors Tad Johnson and John Gessner will continue to dispatch writers to cover the news of this dynamic and growing county.

Larry Werner is editor and general manager of Sun Thisweek and the Dakota County Tribune. He can be reached at larry.werner@ecm-inc.com. Columns reflect the opinion of the author.

It’s taken Rosemount resident Brad Wegner a long time to find his new direction, but he’s doing so with help from his guitar.

Brad Wegner strums a guitar in his new downtown Rosemount business The Guitar Shop in the Rosemount Mall. Photo by Rick Orndorf

After Wegner’s wife died in March 2007 from complications due to cancer, he left his 17-year career in the banking industry to care for his two young adopted children.

He took the time off with the idea that he would re-enter the workforce, but the Great Recession constricted the banking industry so much that Wegner couldn’t find another position.

After it was apparent a change was necessary, the 53-year-old Wegner contemplated what kind of work he would enjoy that give him the balance he sought.

That’s when he turned to his love a music and last October enrolled in a guitar-repair class offered at Southeast Technical College in Red Wing.

At first he contemplated opening a repair business out of his home, but then found reasonable rent and opened The Guitar Shop on May 20 in the Rosemount Mall between 145th and Lower 147th streets on South Robert Trail.

“I like the downtown location and being in the center of the activity,” he said. “I am in the Rosemount mall that was the hub of Rosemount back in the early 80s. I want to bring that back.”

Brad Wegner and Donny Swanson trend mostly old school with their top 10 guitarists of all time. Wegner – Ritchie Blackmore (Deep Purple), Jimi Hendrix, Eddie Van Halen, Jimmy Page, Robin Trower (Procol Harum), Slash, Angus Young (AC/DC), David Gilmore, Tom Scholz (Boston), Nuno Bettencourt (Extreme) Swanson – Joe Satriani, Eddie van Halen, Ace Frehley (Kiss), Michael Shenker (Scorpions, UFO), Vinne Moore (UFO), Randy Rhoads (Ozzy Ozborne, Quiet Riot), Al Di Meola, Paul Gilbert (Racer X, Mr. Big), Yngwie Malmsteen, Nuno Bettencourt. To cast your ballot go to a link at facebook.com/SunThisweek

He plans to do that with a mixture of selling guitars and music accessories, repairing guitars, offering lessons and inviting musicians in for in-store jam sessions.

Since opening, the store has been a magnet in attracting guitarists from throughout the south metro.

“It’s been great,” said Wegner, who grew up on a southern Minnesota farm and lived in Burnsville before moving to Rosemount 16 years ago.

Among the local guitarists who have stopped inhave  been flatpicking champion and Sawtooth bluegrass band member Clint Birtzer, DFL state House candidate Jeff Wilfahrt and Nashville studio musician Ken Wilson,who has played with Mary Chapin Carpenter.

“They are all different people from different walks of life,” Wegner said. “It’s great just to sit and talk to these people and find out what’s their experience. I like to get to know my customers.”

The most important connection Wegner’s made so far is with his old acquaintance, Donny Swanson, a guitar teacher for the past 27 years at Lavonne Music in Savage.

“I called him two nights before I was going to open,” Wegner said. “After I told him what I was doing, he said: ‘I’m in.’ ”

With Wegner’s financial experience, he’s concentrating on running the business, while Swanson provides a deep knowledge of all things guitars.

“He is like a walking encyclopedia,” Wegner said.

Wegner also is counting on his many connections in the local music scene to help spread the word about the business, in addition to marketing in local schools and media.

He’s played in the classic rock cover band Flashback for the past 20 years. The “weekend” band has played mostly town festivals and weddings in recent years and pulls from a catalog of songs from the 50s, 60s and 70s from the likes of the Beatles, Rolling Stones and Elvis.

That experience has led him to installing a mini stage inside the shop. He plans to have live music in the store on Thursday nights.

“At first I thought this place was pretty big, but now I don’t know if I have enough space,” he said of the shop that has 50 guitars in stock.

He has had a few jam sessions already, but he hopes to formalize it so people can view it as a community gathering event.

“Hopefully, I can bring more foot traffic to downtown,” he said. “This is kind of a hidden gem.”

He said he has had six students sign up for guitar lessons, which he is offering every day of the week.

“It’s gone better than I expected,” he said. “People from town and from the area, they are happy to have a guitar shop and music store in town. There is really nothing like this in the area.”

For more information about The Guitar Shop, stop in at its 14555 S. Robert Trail location, call (651) 344-8177 or go online to www.mnguitarshop.com.

Terry Ruhsam, who started teaching in 1970 and his spent his entire career at Metcalf Junior High, is retiring at the end of the school year. Photo by John Gessner

Ruhsam began career in 1970

Terry Ruhsam counts two sets of colleagues from  his teaching career at Metcalf Junior High in Burnsville.

There are those he works with today and those he’s outlasted since starting his career as a social studies teacher in 1970.

“Forty-two years at Metcalf on the second floor,” said Ruhsam, whose current room assignment is 204. “I tell people that and they just  kind of roll their eyes. I will say that there’s been a lot of people I worked with here at Metcalf who stayed here their entire careers. It’s kind of like there’s been two families twice.”

Ruhsam, 64, is at the apex of the teacher seniority list in Burnsville-Eagan-Savage School District 191. He’s served the longest of the 19 teachers who will retire at the end of this school year.

“I just feel comfortable here,” said Ruhsam, who has taught government, economics and American history to eighth-graders for most of his career. “I feel like I’ve had a really good group of people to work with. Over 42 years I’ve worked for four principals (Ted Melloh, John Bednar, Rudy DeLuca and Kelly Ronn). That’s stability in your life.”

Ruhsam, who graduated from high school in Osceola, Wis., in 1966, came to Metcalf after graduating from Hamline University in St. Paul, where he was on the basketball team.

He was one of about a dozen new teachers hired at Metcalf in 1970, the year District 191 opened Nicollet, its second junior high. Even though Metcalf was only about five years old, the new school lured many teachers away, Ruhsam said.

He coached for many years — sports including cross country, boys ninth-grade basketball and girls track and field — and was Metcalf’s activities director  from the late 1980s through the 1990s.

“We used to run full programs here at each (junior high) school,” Ruhsam said. “We had A and B teams. … It’s all been budget cuts over the years, and we lost numbers, too. Football was one of the first to go.”

With fewer activities, kids have less reason to stick around after school and rally behind Metcalf, whose nickname is the Senators, Ruhsam said.

“Like danceline this year — we had a danceline, but it was hard for them to perform, because we didn’t have any games,” he said.

In the classroom, Ruhsam for years taught a semester of government paired with a semester of economics. In recent years his social studies focus has been American history, the result of revamped state academic standards.

The adoption of a STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) program at Metcalf has added a new twist. Ruhsam is teaching two STEM sections of American history that start with post-Civil War developments in industry, automation, invention, labor and business.

“It fits in better with what they’re doing in the STEM curriculum,” Ruhsam said.

In all his classes over the years Ruhsam has been known for his insistence on teaching current events along with past ones.

Each student, once a quarter, must summarize for the class an international news story, a national story and a business-economics story.

“It’s the start of each class period,” Ruhsam said.

How has Metcalf changed over the years?

There used to be music over the loudspeaker that announced the end of class and continued playing as students passed between classes, said Ruhsam, who remembers the halls being somewhat calmer during those times.

“I do remember at holiday time they had a Christmas tape you wouldn’t dare play anymore,” he said. “Eventually the system broke, and that was the end of it.”

Violence?

“Kids still fight,” Ruhsam said. “They got in fights when Metcalf opened. They used to talk about the fights when I came here: ‘Savage kids vs. the east-side-of-Burnsville kids.’ They had their turf wars.”

Fashion?

Ruhsam referred to his own early-’70s uniform of long hair, sideburns and bell bottoms.

Among students, “Tennis shoes and blue jeans have been one of the big staples the whole time I’ve taught, 40-some years.”

Each rental housing unit in Burnsville should be inspected at least every three years, City Council members agreed at a May 15 work session.

Common areas of multifamily buildings should be inspected annually for fire code violations, the council said.

The mandatory inspections — which will be added to Burnsville’s rental license ordinance — represent a change of heart for the council, which is expected to approve the modified ordinance in coming weeks.

When Burnsville first licensed rental units in 2005, the council at the time rejected mandatory inspections and charging landlords a fee to pay for them.

That was before the Country Village Apartments debacle. In January, the city revoked the 138-unit complex’s rental license after nearly a year of wrangling over hundreds of code violations with a property owner that city officials say was uncooperative.

With Country Village fresh on their minds, council members agreed at a retreat earlier this year that more needed to be done to head off problem properties.

“These inspections are very important to the safety of community,” Council Member Dan Gustafson said May 15.

Burnsville has the eighth-highest number of rental units in Minnesota and the seventh-highest concentration (34 percent), according to city-supplied rankings.

Given the age of the rental-housing stock and past problems, “this is a problem which is now our problem,” Council Member Bill Coughlin said, endorsing mandatory inspections despite what he said is his aversion to greater government regulation.

The no-fee, no-inspection rental licenses have yielded many successes, officials say, including a reduction in police calls and help in evicting unruly tenants through a “three-strikes” provision.

But the city has also dealt with problem properties, the worst of which — Country Village — placed unreasonable demands on fire and building inspectors and police.

Would an inspections program have prevented the prevented the debacle? Gustafson asked.

“Members of the council, I believe so,” replied Community Development Director Jenni Faulkner.

The inspections could also enhance the reputation of Burnsville’s rental housing, officials say.

“Ultimately, I think most good property owners will benefit from this,” Council Member Mary Sherry said.

A number of metro cities already do mandatory inspections — some even set aside money to acquire and redevelop aging rental properties, Faulkner said.

Burnsville has 8,917 registered rental units — 7,417 in multifamily buildings, 750 in single-family homes and 746 rental lots in mobile home parks.

Officials say they’ll need to add 3.5 inspection positions to inspect each unit every three years. Most metro cities impose both a per-building and per-unit charge for inspections.

Burnsville’s proposed inspection fees, to be paid annually, range from $140 for a single-family rental unit to $8,750 for the 400-unit The Woods, the city’s largest apartment complex.

The council also endorsed an annual fire inspection of building common areas, where most fire-code violations occur. That will require a half-time inspector division at $71,000 and impose extra, annual costs of $240 per building or $10 per unit.

The unit inspections would cover more than building and fire codes. Under proposed ordinance changes, corrective action or license revocation could be applied to units declared “unfit for human habitation.”

“The city has found numerous hoarders in multifamily units over the past year,” said a city staff report. “Regular inspections of units would help the property managers and city to better deal with these.”

With the City Council on board and fundraising underway in the business community, momentum is growing behind a new Boys and Girls Club location in Burnsville.

Questions remain about where to put the club and how to fill a projected $100,000 annual funding gap.

But planning continues to replace The GARAGE, Burnsville’s 13-year-old teen center, with the first suburban outlet of the Boys and Girls Clubs of the Twin Cities.

“The GARAGE is going to transition,” Council Member Dan Gustafson said at a council work session May 15. “It just needs to be stated.”

Now the question is whether to renovate and expand the current GARAGE site or wait and see if a closed school building becomes available.

Talk of closing a school  in Burnsville-Eagan-Savage School District 191 has accelerated since the School Board this month quashed a money-saving proposal to shorten the school calendar.

Permanent savings from closing a school would go a small way toward the district’s goal of cutting spending by $15 million over three years.

The district is a partner in the Boys and Girls Club project. The district’s  Burnsville Area Learning Center plans to provide programs and two full-time teachers at the club.

Any decision on a building closing would likely be made well before the start of the 2013-14 school year.

“It just remains to be seen how it all plays out,” Council Member Bill Coughlin said.

Backers say a Boys and Girls Club could offer programs to up to 150 children a day, reaching more children and a wider age range with  more programs than The GARAGE, which has struggled with funding and fluctuating attendance.

A major part of the Boys and Girls Club proposal is a Kids Feeding Kids program, with a kitchen and dining area that could accommodate 180 children  per day. Nearly half of District 191 students qualify for free or subsidized school meals.

The Boys and Girls Club proposal has met resistance from youthful GARAGE organizers and loyalists, whom Boys and Girls Club planners vowed to include in their planning process.

The city spends $125,000 a year on operations at the GARAGE, which is also funded by various grants. There’s a $50,000 hole in next year’s GARAGE budget, Deputy City Manager Tom Hansen said. Longtime manager Eric Billiet departed earlier this year, and the GARAGE has an interim manager and inexperienced staffers, Hansen said, adding that “they’ll basically be scaling back the operation.”

Amid budget cuts in 2009, the council shelved a $1 million plan to renovate and expand the GARAGE space in the city maintenance building in Civic Center Park.

It would cost an estimated $950,000 to renovate the GARAGE space and an extra 8,450 square feet for the Boys and Girls Club. Additions would include the dining area and a sport court.

Under current plans, the Boys and Girls Club would pay $328,000 a year to support operations, with five full-time staffers and some part-timers. The city would continue to contribute $125,000 a year and the building (unless a closed school is chosen).

Also, Brad and Melanie Rixmann  have committed $25,000 a year for 10 years for the dining program. (They have also committed $10,000 to the capital campaign for building improvements.)

That still leaves questions about how to fund the renovation and cover a $100,000 annual funding gap in operations.

Fundraising is underway. Council members Gustafson and Dan Kealey have been pitching the Boys and Girls Club in the business community.

“I am confident beyond any doubt whatsoever that $100,000 gap will be filled, and will be filled by people in he Burnsville community,” Kealey said.

Valley Park in northeastern Lakeville is one of the city’s oldest postwar neighborhoods.

Few things represent this more than its aging infrastructure.

The Valley Park area of Lakeville will undergo a large-scale street and water and sewer reconstruction this summer and fall, the city’s effort to upgrade aging infrastructure. Pictured is the project area, which encompasses several subdivisions. Submitted graphic.

There have been 12 water main breaks since 1995, when the city began keeping records of breaks, said Monica Heil of WSB Engineering, a consultant to the city. Most of those beaks were on Gerdine Path.

Last year, the Public Works Department rated all 260 miles of roadways in the city, said Public Works Director Chris Petree. The streets in Valley Park have among the lowest ratings in the city. Temporary measures such as patching potholes won’t work anymore.

To fix this, the city will embark from June to November on an $8 million project in the worst-off parts of Valley Park to conduct storm sewer and street improvements, replace the aging metal water mains with robust plastic ones and replace the 168th Street bridge.

The construction will occur inside an area bounded by Gerdine Path (on the west and north from Dodd Boulevard) to Flagstaff Avenue, Florin Avenue to the east and streets in the south such as Frazer Path, Gage Avenue and Franchise Way.

The cost, about $8.1 million, comes in at $500,000 less than originally expected, thanks to a favorable bid climate.

The city will cover about $5.2 million of the total cost of construction, using Street Capital Improvement Funds.

Benefitting residents will be assessed $2.7 million of the total cost. This amounts to a little more than $4,000 per single family household, according to the city. The City Council approved a deferment for senior citizens 65 years or older.

The state will cover the $240,000 balance for the bridge replacement.

The city and WSB have held a number of neighborhood meetings, in addition to public hearings during council meetings since last fall.

About 85 residents turned out at the April 26 meeting at Parkview Elementary. Many of the primary concerns centered on traffic management during construction.

Other concerns centered on the cost of the assessment, which accrues interest if homeowners do not pay it in full by the time taxes are due.

“I have two neighbors who have lost houses to foreclosure,” said Robert Palmer, who lives in the project area, at a January City Council meeting. “I just don’t think this is a time when we should be putting a big burden on people.”

Mayor Mark Bellows said at the time that he understood homeowners’ concerns, but the area needs the upgrades.

“We’re dealing with the reality that we are an aging city,” he said.

After the city council approved the project in January, WSB undertook an assessment of all the curbs and gutters in the project area. The firm determined that at least 70 percent of them would need to be replaced, according to a WSB memo.

When that much replacement is required, according to the city, it is more cost-effective to replace all curbs and gutters in the project area.

The large-scale nature of the project means that crews will undertake it in phases.

The City Council is expected to vote at its May 21 meeting to award the construction work to McNamara Contracting.

The project also has provided utilities with the opportunity for their own upgrades. CenterPoint Energy decided to replace some existing gas mains and services within the project area, according to the city. Preparation for the work began in April.

Dakota Electric Association also plans to replace some existing wooden light poles with new fiberglass versions.

Readers can find more detailed information on the project at the city’s website.

Every coach’s goal is to see improvement throughout the season. With track, that’s easy to measure.

For the girls track and field team at Burnsville, coach Jennifer Fettig measured all kinds of improvement in 2012. The girls won their own invitational on May 12 and improved in their team standing every meet from last year.

Up next is the South Suburban Conference meet on Tuesday and Wednesday where the Blaze hope to move up from eighth place last season.

Vivian Hett, one of the top runners in the state, broke the 11-minute mark in the 3200-meter run at the Hamline Elite Meet. She’s set school records in the mile and two mile, and is approaching the record in the 800.

“Vivian Hett is inspiring,” Fettig said. “Her foot speed and kick are much better this year and she trusts herself in the middle of the race.  I believe she will compete with the best at the end of the season.”

The South Suburban Conference is stacked with some of the best distance runners in the state. She’ll be racing against Eagan’s Danielle Anderson, Lakeville North’s Taylor Perkins, Prior Lake’s Taylor Scholl and Bloomington Kennedy’s Sara Conlon.

The competition only pushes her to go faster.

“Ultimately, Vivian is a motivated athlete that loves winning,” Fettig said. “Put her in a position to catch somebody, and the race is over.”

Lateeka Thompson is another Burnsville athlete mixing it up with the best in the state in the throwing events. She’s had some of the best shot put distances, breaking the 40-foot barrier early on in the season and 130 feet in the discus throw. She set a new school record in the discus at the Joe Lane Invitational at Minntonka, which also tied a 20-year-old meet record.

It was an improvement of 10 feet more than her best from 2011.

“Teeka is a competitor,” Fettig said. “If given the last throw, she will put a mark out there to win. That’s just who she is.”

She, too, has some fierce competition for a conference title with Lakeville North’s Emma Erickson, Prior Lake’s Kasie Vollmer and Lakeville South’s Jordyn Thornton and Monica Turner.

Jeannie Taylor has made the most of her senior year as a consistent victor in the 300 hurdles and breaking the 16-foot mark in the long jump.

She leads a lead a talented group of young jumpers with Alyssa Meilahn who’s already fourth on Burnsville’s all-time list in the triple jump as a ninth-grader.

“It’s not all that common for a ninth grader to catch onto an event as technical as the triple jump as fast as Alyssa has, and that is very promising for her success in the event,” Fettig said.

Fellow ninth-grader Megan Engle is following in Taylor’s shoes making the honor roll in both the long jump and 300 hurdles.

“If we don’t see a state birth from these two freshmen this year, it’s definitely promising for the next year,” Fettig said.

The sprints and relays have been given a boost by young runners Selvi Bunce, Tania Burciaga, Monica Burt and Erica Kesseh along with junior Maddie Kuplic.

High jumpers Kate Griffin and Annie Oberg have cleared 5 feet. Griffin set a school record two years ago, but suffered a knee injury last season.

Surprises for Fettig came in from eighth grade where mid distance runner Johanna Weber and pole vaulter Katie Shealy have added another element to Burnsville’s success along with vaulter Aneesa Ally, thrower Kelly Below, shot putter Rebekka Schrank and jumper Katie Shealy,

The Blaze have one sure-fire advantage during the South Suburban Conference meet beginning Tuesday. The other 10 conference teams will come to Burnsville for the meet.

Boys

The Blaze also won their own six-team Burnsville Invitational last weekend thanks to wins from Andrew Herkenhoff in the 110 hurdles, Cole O’Brien in the 3200, 4×400 relay and Jordan Huus in the 300.

A few second-place winners included Ben Gillies (100 dash), Zack Jones (400 and triple jump), 4×200, Sean Wong (1600). Herkenhoff (300 hurdles) and Abdul Salan (3200).

Farmington's Ashley Betzlod tosses out a pitch against Chanhassen. Photo by Andy Rogers

Farmington tops Chanhassen 9-5 in key conference game

The Farmington softball team won perhaps its most important game of the season Tuesday.

Farmington defeated Chanhassen 9-5 in a game between two of the three teams tied for first place in the Missota Conference. Shakopee also was tied for the lead.

With a win against Red Wing on Thursday, Farmington would at minimum share the conference title. The result of the game was unavailable at presstime.

“It’s been a goal of mine for four years of being on varsity,” senior catcher Allison Rice said about winning the conference championship. “We are more close as a team and really support each other this year. We always have each other’s backs.”

Chanhassen had won six straight to tie for the conference lead, while Farmington had won just once in its previous three games.

“We just needed to pick our backs up and we did that tonight,” Rice said. “A lot of girls stepped up.”

The Tigers took an early 3-0 lead, but the Storm closed the gap in the third and took a 5-4 lead in the sixth.

Farmington loaded the bases several times and finally got some timely hitting in the sixth inning. Brooklynn Searles led off with a triple and Ashley Betzold, Taylor Haakana, Taylor Yousse and Aleah Williamson advanced runners around the bases, giving the Tigers a 9-5 lead.

“We didn’t give up when we got behind,” head coach Paul Harrington said. “They hit the ball. We hit the ball. I give the girls a lot of credit for hanging in there.”

Betzold closed out the Storm for her 12th pitching victory.

“She’s really been working hard,” said Rice, the Tigers’ catcher. “She’s really improved this year.”

With a successful regular season nearly completed, the Tigers now turn to the playoffs. Farmington should get one of the top two seeds along with a first-round bye in the Section 1AAA playoffs.

Farmington’s biggest obstacle appears to be Rochester John Marshall, which is third in the Big 9 conference with a record similar to Farmington’s.

The rest of the section is filled with teams that have hovered around .500 such as Northfield, Owatonna, Rochester Mayo and Winona, as well as struggling teams from Albert Lea, Austin, Faribault and Rochester Century.

But the Tigers know too well what can happen any given afternoon. Farmington was shut out by Owatonna 4-0 on May 11 thanks to a couple of errors and some quiet bats.

“Anything can happen. We’re just going to take what we can get and run with it,” Rice said. “(Beating Chanhassen) really gave us a confidence boost and we hope to take that with us to sections.”

While John Marshall and Farmington are the likely favorites, Hastings is a team to watch. The defending state Class AAA champion was 7-11 with one regular-season game remaining but will not be taken lightly.

“No matter how bad their record is, I still think they might be the best team in there,” Harrington said. “Hastings plays a tough game every game. They don’t have any gimmies.”

The Section 1AAA tournament is scheduled to begin May 23.

The Tigers haven’t been to state in nearly 10 years. The team’s last trip was in 2003 when Farmington reached the state championship game before losing to Eastview.

Winners for South included Cash Rodamaker and Chase Roseth in singles. David Mangione and Joel Varghese got the win at third doubles. At the end of the Winona match, all eyes were on Joey Machaj and Alex Bird at No. 2 doubles. They pulled out a 4-6, 6-1, 7-5 victory to send the Cougars to the section quarterfinals against Red Wing on Thursday.

Lakeville North also got a postseason victory, sweeping Austin 7-0 on Tuesday in the first round. The Panthers went on to play No. 1 south seed Rochester Mayo on Thursday. Farmington was swept 7-0 by Owatonna.

Freddy Thomas is ranked No. 1 in the state after winning four individual titles and two of the three conference meets. He has a scoring average of 74.3. His brother Bobby Thomas isn’t far behind at 75.9.

Five Panthers are averaging below 80 this season.