Hometown pride: Holmen starts amateur team with local college ball players

The wood bat amateur baseball Mississippi Valley League is getting a major injection of local talent.

Scott Gilbertson, part of the 1990 Holmen state champion team and frequent Holmen Legion coach, has seen a lot of local kids reach some level of college baseball in recent years.

So this summer, Gilbertson wanted to get that local back together to play some summer ball.

“So many of these kids now are going on to play college baseball. And then their season would end, they’d come back home and they’d be playing for all these other MVL teams. We thought with all these kids playing college baseball–I think we have 9 Holmen kids now playing college baseball–we thought let’s get a place where they can come play,” Gilbertson said.

He pitched the idea to Features of Holmen, whose owner agreed to sponsor a new team that’s literally all made up of college athletes, almost all hailing from Holmen.

The team’s roster includes, among others, Holmen natives like Dylan Westcott, Mason Palmer, and Cam Weber of Saint Mary’s baseball, Nevin Wall, Kevin Koelbl, and Caleb Matl of UWL baseball, and Jess Ondell of Winona State baseball.

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