08/11/2026
Panthers Upset State’s #2 Ranked Cold Spring and Clinch Third Straight State Tournament Berth
It’s remarkable to think about how different the world was just 21 years ago, in 2005. Steve Jobs was still more than a year away from unveiling the Apple iPhone, a revolutionary device that would eventually put dozens of everyday tools into a jean pocket. Blockbuster had more than 9,000 stores worldwide; today, there is one. Netflix still mailed DVDs to its customers. MapQuest was relied upon to get people from one place to another, and landlines remained a primary connection to friends and family.
All are reminders of just how much can change in 21 years. For a more local example – with a baseball flavor – you have to go back just as far to find the last Panther team to qualify for three consecutive State Tournaments.
The 2005 Panthers finished with a record of 22-10. Those were the waning years of what can probably be classified as the golden era of Princeton townball. The magnificent core that featured familiar local names like Dorr, Zimmer, Stay, Campbell, Carling, Beattie, Wilson, and Miller was still intact. On the final Sunday of that year’s Region Tournament, the Panthers overwhelmed rival Hinckley 18-3 behind a banner performance from Jesse Zimmer, who homered twice, drove in seven runs, and threw five innings as the winning pitcher against the Knights. Zimmer hit four home runs across two games that day as Princeton punched its ticket to an eighth consecutive State Tournament.
While this generation of Panthers hasn’t matched that group’s sheer dominance, it has developed a consistency of its own. As the years have gone by, this core has refined its roster and in-game formula to the point where one thing has become increasingly reliable: when the calendar turns to August, Princeton seems to play its best baseball.
The path to State this time around, however, appeared considerably more difficult. Thanks in part to a three-game losing streak during the third week of July (all at the hands of Eastern Minny League opponents) the Panthers entered the Region 1B Tournament as the league’s No. 4 seed. Their reward for that sloppy stretch was a first-round date with the tournament host, the Cold Spring Springers.
The Springers weren’t the type of opponent Princeton had grown accustomed to facing in the opening round of the playoffs. Cold Spring finished just one run shy of advancing to the Final Four of the Class B State Tournament last Labor Day weekend and entered this year’s Region Tournament ranked No. 2 in the state by the most recent mnbaseball.org Class B poll. Three of the contributing writers even cast first-place votes for the Springers.
The Panthers, meanwhile, failed to receive a single vote in that same poll. Though they couldn’t have felt too slighted given the way July played out, they rolled into Cold Spring on Friday night with a slight chip on their shoulder, ready to play the cards they had been dealt.
Princeton 7, Cold Spring 6
FRIDAY, AUGUST 7TH – COLD SPRING BASEBALL PARK
The Panthers handed the ball to their ace right-hander, Brent Tholen (2-0, 1.70 ERA) and asked him to slow down an explosive Cold Spring lineup. Just a few days earlier, the Springers had thumped the Raymond Rockets, a team many consider among the best in Class B, by a score of 15-4.
But Tholen wouldn’t be intimidated. After giving up a single in each of his first two innings, he didn’t allow another Cold Spring hitter to reach base over his next four frames. Through six innings, Tholen faced just two batters over the minimum despite recording just two strikeouts.
When Tholen walked off the mound after retiring the Springers in order again in the bottom of the sixth inning, he had maintained the 1-0 lead his club offensive had given him off back-to-back doubles by Nick Spitt and Gehrig Scheffel in the fourth inning.
The bottom of the Panther lineup then helped ignite a four-run seventh inning thanks to a string of solid plate appearances. Cam Jensen led the inning off with a walk, and when Tholen and shortstop Tyson Dusosky followed with back-to-back singles, the bases were loaded and the lineup turned over for stud slugger Eli Gibbs. Gibbs laced the first pitch he saw all the way to the ivy draped across the left-field fence. By the time the ball found its way back into the infield, Gibbs was standing on third while his teammates erupted from the nearby dugout to celebrate his bases-clearing triple.
Two batters later, Gibbs came home on a Nolan Spence single through the left side. Once again, Gibbs and Spence were the spokes that made the Panther offense go round and round.
Suddenly, the Panthers had the hometown favorites on the ropes with a 5-0 lead and just nine outs remaining.
Recent history, however, would indicate that the ballgame was far from over.
Whatever energy Princeton generated in the top half of the seventh seemed to transfer immediately to the Springers’ bats. Tholen surrendered a leadoff single in the bottom of the inning before his cruise control was deactivated by Cold Spring cleanup hitter Joe Dempsey. Dempsey launched a two-run home run over the left-field wall to trim the lead to 5-2.
Spitt came in to relieve Tholen after two more Springer hits. He eventually struck out the side, but not before both inherited runners plus another came around to score. The last of those runs came on a bang-bang play at the plate, where the home plate umpire ruled the runner had slipped underneath Cam Jensen’s tag despite Gehrig Scheffel’s throw beating him home.
Just like that, Princeton’s five-run cushion was gone.
Cold Spring kept the pressure on in the eighth, when the leadoff hitter reached and eventually came around to score following two uncharacteristic errors from Dusosky and Scheffel. The unearned run gave the Springers their first lead of the night and left Princeton down to its final three outs.
The Panthers dug in.
Tholen reached base for the third time of the night with a leadoff single in the ninth. Gibbs drew a one-out walk, and two batters later the Panthers had runners at the corners when Spence stepped into the box.
Spence watched a breaking ball dive low and away and skip past Cold Spring catcher Drew Bulson. Niko Bratulich, who had entered to pinch run for Tholen, scored easily from third to tie the game at six.
What happened next was something out of a Hollywood scene.
Throughout the humid summer night, Bulson had made a habit of exchanging wet baseballs for fresh, dry ones. After retrieving the wild pitch from the backstop, Bulson tossed the ball toward his dugout to have it dried, believing time had been granted by the home plate umpire.
It hadn’t.
Princeton’s lone baserunner, Jake Carlson, was still in motion, advancing from first to second. Once Carlson realized the live baseball was sitting in the hands of a Springer bat boy in the dugout, he never stopped running. Carlson raced around third and came all the way home, stunning the Cold Spring crowd and giving the Panthers a 7-6 lead.
After all the critical misfortunes and mishaps that had helped force the Panthers into an opening-round matchup against the state’s No. 2-ranked team, the baseball lords had finally given them something to balance the scales.
Damon Rademacher came in for Spitt in the bottom of the ninth and recorded a hard-earned save. Rademacher got Bulson, Dempsey, and Drew VanLoy (Cold Spring’s 3-4-5 hitters) out to end the game after the Springers led off the inning with back-to-back singles.
For Princeton, it was another instant classic in the Region Tournament. This one was a total team effort – 8 different Panthers collected hits on the night and Luke Hallbeck made two pitching changes that helped temper Cold Spring’s lineup and keep his own within striking distance long enough to pull off the tournament’s first major upset.
Princeton 10, St. Joseph 2
SUNDAY, AUGUST 9TH – COLD SPRING BASEBALL PARK
The weekend encore was less dramatic. After the victory over Cold Spring, the Panthers watched the St. Joseph Joes play spoiler themselves as they took down the Chisago Lakes Bulldogs 6-1 in the first game on Saturday.
As sweet as the victory was for St. Joseph, it came at a cost. Silencing a lineup as deep as Chisago’s required the Joes to expend a good portion of their pitching staff before Sunday’s game against Princeton.
The Panthers had used three of their top arms against Cold Spring the night before, but they had a card left to play.
Kevin Rahe was home.
Rahe had just finished his second summer pitching for the Minot Hot Tots in the Northwoods League and was ready to spend his first day back pitching the Panthers back to the State Tournament.
Rahe’s story is one of consistent development. Four summers ago, he was taking the mound for Princeton during the State Legion Baseball Tournament as part of a talented group that outscored its opponents 35-4 during the sub-state tournament. From there came Mesabi Range College before transferring to University of Wisconsin Superior, where he earned all-conference and all-region honors in 2025. Rahe finished his senior year at Superior this past spring and is hopeful he’ll be granted a fifth year of eligibility.
Kevin Rahe has never lacked confidence, or pitches to choose from, when he toes the rubber. That confidence only grew after the Panther offense handed him a five-run lead before he took the mound in the second inning.
The early barrage was aided by four walks and a hit batter from St. Joseph starter Isaac Benesh, In between those gifts came RBI singles from Brent Tholen and Jake Carlson. Tholen’s hit was his third of the tournament.
Rahe kept a pesky Joes offense uncomfortable with his arsenal of off-speed pitches. He delivered a performance worth of the moment, but it certainly didn’t come without the help from the defense behind him.
Throughout Rahe’s complete-game outing, the Panthers made a series of difficult plays that helped keep their pitcher working from the windup. Tholen made a shoelace grab on a shallow fly ball to right field in the opening inning. Shortstop Tyson Dusosky and third baseman Nolan Spence continued their defensive excellence, each making multiple ranging plays on balls hit into open space on the left side of the infield. Catcher Cam Jensen squeezed a foul ball against the backstop in his final inning behind the dish.
Collectively, the Panthers played error-free defense yet again.
St. Joseph took its best swing in the bottom of the fifth, stringing together four hits against Rahe. The right-hander navigated through the storm, and when the inning finally came to an end, Princeton still held a comfortable 8-2 advantage.
Rahe went the distance in his return to the Panthers, allowig six hits and only the two fifth-inning runs while striking out three.
The Panther offense finished with nine hits. Scheffel led the way with three, Carlson bounced back from a difficult Friday night with two hits and three RBIs, and Jensen reached base three times via the walk.
Looking Ahead:
With the win, Princeton has qualified for the 24-team, Class B State Tournament, which will be played across host sites in Jordan, New Prague, Shakopee, and Chaska.
Before then, the Panthers will face the Sauk Rapids Cyclones in the Region 1B Championship Game next Friday night at 7:30 PM. The Cyclones clinched their own State Tournament berth Sunday night with a 6-2 victory over Isanti, the Eastern Minny League’s top seed.
Princeton defeated Sauk Rapids 15-0 at Solheim Field in the final game of the regular season on July 28th. Fans should not be fooled by that outcome, however, as the Cyclones appear to have restocked their pitching and hitting for the postseason, as evidenced by their 14-hit performance off one of the state’s best left-handed pitchers, Phil Bray, on Sunday.
Though the 10-2 victory over St. Joseph was rather anti-climactic, the Panther’s sustained success over the better part of the last decade deserves acknowledgement. This year’s appearance will mark the fifth State Tournament in eight years for the core group of players who revived Princeton’s townball program after it folded in 2014. Almost the entirety of that original core are graduates of Princeton High School – Jake Carlson, Damon Rademacher, Tanner Kinney, Luke Hallbeck, Dan Voce, Gehrig Scheffel – and developed their skills at the ballpark they still call home, Solheim Field.
Over the years, that hometown core has been supplemented by an increasingly important collection of talent from neighboring communities – Nolan Spence, Wyatt Petron, Tyson Dusosky, Brent Tholen, Nick Spitt, and Cedric Moreno have filled needs, strengthened the roster, and helped turn Princeton into one of the best townball clubs in Class B. The three consecutive trips to State wouldn’t have happened without them.
Time will tell just how long this group can sustain its current run, but the pieces are certainly in place for Princeton to remain relevant for years to come. More than two decades after that special generation of Panthers became a fixture at the State Tournament each August, this group has built a legacy of its own.
There is still one accomplishment missing from their résumé.
They’ve never won a Region Tournament.
On Friday night in Cold Spring, they’ll get another chance to do so.
