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As Minnesota’s best high school softball teams gather for the state tournament, they all have stories to tell about their path to state. It’s hard to top what the team from Becker High School has been through.

I absolutely cannot remember ever seeing this happen before … the head coach of the losing team shooting photos of the winning team.

Karl Erickson has fond memories of his high school career, and he is sure of one thing: Records are made to be broken. “I know someone will come along and smash it,” he said.

Cyrus and Elijah Jones of Minneapolis Edison are football players in the fall, wrestlers in the winter, and in the spring they are members of the baseball and track and field teams.

Winona Cotter's Pat Bowlin is the second softball coach in Minnesota history to win 800 games, and he is on pace to become the career leader in victories.

The Overgaauw sisters of Murray County Central run and they win, and that’s been the theme for years, during the fall cross-country season and on the track in the spring ever since they were in seventh grade.

In 2012 Maggie Ewen was a junior at St. Francis, breaking and re-breaking state records in the shot put and discus and winning seven state titles. More than a decade later her state records remain.

Mike Manning is one of the longest-serving athletic directors in Minnesota, having spent 27 years in that position at Rosemount High School. Mike will retire at the conclusion of the 2022-23 school year,

The baseball team from Cromwell-Wright rode a bus for three and a half hours to play a doubleheader at Janesville-Waldorf-Pemberton. By the time they arrived home late that night, they had been gone for more than 12 hours.

The GMLOKS Bulldogs girls 4x200 relay teams have won state titles at the four MSHSL state meets.

When the Tigers return to their school in Browerville, a long-term, hometown reality for their students, teams and communities is striking. On April 1, a heavy load of snow and ice caused the roof on the Browerville gymnasium to start sagging, and the gym was demolished.

Assuming that the roads would be clear (which they were), I decided to visit all three Monday events -- softball game, track meet, baseball game – as a memorable way to observe my first day of 2023 spring outdoor competitions.