Silver Bay’s playoff run began in the middle of a season that had already stretched this young roster in every direction. The Mariners had been through postponements, long road trips, lineup shuffles, and the kind of growing pains that come with relying on seventh, eighth, and ninth graders for varsity innings.
They had also shown flashes of what they could become, but the final week of the regular season brought a skid that forced them to reset. The bats went quiet and the defense slipped. They dropped three straight, looking nothing like the group that had been building momentum earlier in the month.
Head coach Ward Wallin went back to the basics, the same approach he had leaned on earlier in the spring when the team was still learning how to play together.
“Our hitting was absent, and our fielding was atrocious. So I went back to the basic fundamentals and did some real simple fielding drills,” the coach advised.
The playoffs opened with Barnum, the fourth seed. Silver Bay was the five. They had played earlier in the season and lost 6–0 in a game Wallin described as competitive despite the score. This one followed the same pattern. Tight innings, limited hits, and a couple of defensive mistakes that made the difference. Grady Hoff pitched well enough to keep the Mariners in it, but the offense never broke through.
“They had four hits off Grady and we only had one. A couple errors in the sixth inning cost us and we lost two nothing. But it was really a good game, back and forth,” said Wallin.
It was the kind of loss that could have ended things quickly for a young team, but instead, it sharpened them. The Mariners moved into the elimination bracket and faced Cromwell next, a team they had already seen once this season.
The start was almost unbelievable. Three innings. Three double plays. The kind of statistical oddity that makes a coach shake his head even as it’s happening.
“I don’t know if it’s ever happened to me in my career, but we hit into double plays in the first inning, the second inning, and the third inning,” recalled Wallin.
Silver Bay settled in and broke through for four runs in the fourth inning, then added nine or ten more in the sixth. They won 15–5 behind six strong innings from sophomore Palmer Larson.
And the bats were back. Brecken Hoff, Levi Cook, and McCoy Williams each had two hits. Brighton Otterblad added one. It was the kind of game that resets a team’s confidence. That win set up a rematch with Barnum, and this is where the season took a turn that no one could have scripted.
Wallin started seventh grader Max Klemmer on the mound. Klemmer had pitched well throughout the season, but this was a different stage. The game stayed tight from the start. Barnum scored once. Silver Bay couldn’t find a way to answer.
“I’m starting to think we played Barnum, I don’t know, 17 innings and we hadn’t scored a run yet,” said Wallin. “I’m just thinking, man, what’s going on. We are a good hitting team.”
They had chances and a failed squeeze attempt. They had runners in scoring position. Nothing broke open until an obstruction call changed the inning.
Silver Bay had a runner on second. The umpire signaled obstruction, but the base umpire didn’t advance the runner. Wallin walked out and asked him to check with the home plate umpire. After a short conversation, the runner was awarded third. The Mariners had tied the game, and then the real drama began.
Wallin brought in Otterblad, another seventh grader, to pitch the bottom of the seventh. Otterblad had been steady all season. He throws strikes and doesn’t overpower hitters. He relies on control and a breaking ball that moves enough to matter. The first batter walked on four pitches.
“In high school baseball, when you walk a guy in extra innings or the bottom of the seventh, they score 95 percent of the time,” explained Wallin.
Barnum bunted the runner over. A hard hit ball put runners on second and third with one out. Wallin intentionally walked the cleanup hitter to load the bases. Otterblad struck out the next two batters.
The place went wild.
It happened again in the eighth. A walk. A bunt. A hard hit ball. Second and third. One out. Another intentional walk. Infield in. Outfield in. And Otterblad got out of it again, striking out the two and three hitters.
“You can’t make this stuff up,” Wallin laughed as he recounted the game.
The Mariners had been playing tight, clean baseball for several innings, but they still hadn’t found the big hit. In the top of the ninth, they finally broke through. Otterblad hit the ball hard to get things started. A bunt moved the runner. Hoff singled. Then Cook delivered a twoRBI single that gave Silver Bay a three-run lead. Barnum scored once in the bottom half and put the tying run on first with two outs, but the Mariners closed it out.
“It was such an exciting game,” said Wallin. “The adrenaline flow.”
The Mariners’ youth has been the backdrop to everything they’ve done. It has shaped their practices, their lineup decisions, their approach to close games, and their ability to bounce back from mistakes. Wallin has said it since April. He said it again this week.
“I have to remember they’re seventh graders. One day I was hollering at them and I said, quit playing like seventh graders. And one of them said, we ARE, Coach.”
He laughed when he told the story. Then he added the part that matters.
“Down the stretch, our seventh graders have been playing like seniors.”
Otterblad had three hits and two RBIs in the second game. Hoff and McCoy Williams have been among the hottest hitters on the roster. The pitching staff that was a project in April is now a strength. All of the young players are learning on the fly. And they all delivered when it mattered.
“We’ve been underdogs all year just because we’re so young,” Wallin said.
But the underdogs are still standing. Silver Bay faced Cherry and Hibbing on June 2, with games concluding after press time.
Cherry has one of the best hitters in northeast Minnesota and has been a familiar opponent in recent years. The teams match up well. The coaches know each other. The games tend to be tight.
“I like our odds if we play well,” Wallin said.
The Mariners have been building toward this moment all season, even if no one knew it at the time. They have played on borrowed fields, in cold wind, in heat that came too early, and in games that were moved, postponed, or squeezed into the calendar. They have played with a roster that has had to learn everything the hard way. They have played with a senior who has balanced baseball with theater and EMT training. They have played with assistants who returned to the program they once played for. They have played with a coach who has had to adjust, adapt, and trust kids who are still years away from driving themselves to practice.
They have played like a team that doesn’t know it is supposed to wait its turn.
When Wallin talked about this group in April, he said they were hungry, were eager to learn, and they were fun. He said they were going to be exciting in a couple of years. He wasn’t wrong, but the timeline has changed.
Their coach calls them “The Mighty. The Mini. The Mariners of ’26,” and they have proven they’re not waiting for their moment. They’re in it.
