“This is fun,” Vistas outfielder Paxten Wahlund said. “For some of us, this is our last time playing baseball. So, it’s a lot of fun to be at home, in front of our home crowd and on our home field.”

The question is how long will they get to play on their home field? The No. 5-seeded Vistas come in with a 20-16 overall record and an 8-8 mark in conference games. An average season, and right about where head coach Pat Arntson thought they would end up.

“I thought we finished appropriately, there are not many games you look back on and think we should have won,” Arntson said. “Early in the year we gave away a couple of leads against Fargo and West Fargo, but I don’t think we were ready to compete with some of those more veteran, higher talented teams from the east side. We were inexperienced and some of the moments got to us. But, as the year progressed, I thought we won a lot of the games we should have and the same goes for the losses.”

The Vistas match up with the No. seeded Williston Keybirds (10-6 in-region) in the first round at roughly 8 p.m. tonight. The two teams split their season counter series with a 5-3 win for Willison and a 2-0 Minot win.

Alex Eisen/MDN Minot Vistas’ Chase Burke crosses home plate in an American Legion baseball game played earlier this season at Corbett Field.

It’s a safe bet that another close game is in the works tonight.

“Honestly, and I don’t know what they would say, but it’s as much of a coin flip game to start the state tournament than any other match up,” Arntson said. “We each have a No. 1 (pitcher) with some velocity that’s really going to make you beat him and we have guys in the lineup that can jump a ball if you need them to. I think it’s as even as it gets.”

This season, the Vistas’ offense has been spread out pretty evenly. Jack Plemel, Kyler Stenberg and Creighton Rudolph are all batting over .300. Plemel leads the team in RBIs with 33 followed by Carson Tonini (30), Stenberg (23) and Dylan Vigestad (20).

Tonini has had the most pop in his bat with half of the Vistas’ eight home runs.

Alex Schimke leads the team in doubles (10), Wahlund has drawn 35 walks (only to be outdone by Rudolph with 39) and the team has stolen 72 bases in 36 games.

“This is a new start,” Wahlund said. “The regular season is behind us.”

In the double elimination format, reliable pitching is paramount to make a long tournament run.

The Vistas know this having made deep runs at state over the past two seasons. In 2016, Minot was a win away from the championship series and last year they lost in the title game, 5-2, to three-time defending champions Fargo Post 2.

“Somewhere nearly half of these guys weren’t on (last year’s) roster,” Arntson said. “But, our core group of guys like Tonini and Rudolph have been on the last two years when we took third and second. The other guys like Stenberg, Schimke and Wahlund were all part of that runner-up team. So, they have all seen what it takes to get deep into the tournament. It won’t be new to them.”

Minot’s pitching core is led by ace Tonini. He is 5-1 on the season with a 1.07 ERA, and has stuck out a team-high 65 batters in 46 innings of work.

The Vistas also have a handful of other guys they could turn to in Wahlund (3.24 ERA in 40-plus innings), Schimke (4.56 ERA in 38 1/3 innings), Stenberg (4.03 ERA in 33 innings), Blake Smith and Derek Nygaard.

“Finishing games,” Nygaard said was the team’s biggest improvement this season. “We got to throw strikes, limit the base runners and don’t give them free passes because then they are going to get a big hit and score those runs.”

Resiliency has been the Vistas’ forte over the last month of the season. In recent defeats to Bismarck, Minot battled back from nearly being mercied to at least making the games interesting.

That wasn’t always the case.

“Early on, there were some games — even with some of our older guys — that we were really unimpressed with the attention we gave to certain games,” Arntson said. “We left Dickinson with two wins, but that was probably the most disappointing we have played all year… We had a good talk after that game about how we can’t cover skill issues when we have to talk about effort. That was early in the year and honestly, since then, we haven’t had to talk (about effort anymore.)”

To make another deep run, the Vistas will need to keep that fighting spirit intact.

Fargo Post 2 (14-2 in-region) comes in as the favorites with the No. 1 seed and past three state championships. They get No. 8-ranked Dickinson (4-12 in-region) in the first round at noon.

The No. 3 Bismarck Governors (12-4 in-region) take on the No. 6 Grand Forks Royals (7-9 in-region) following the conclusion of the first game.

The No. 2 West Fargo Patriots (12-4 in-region) go up against the No. 7 Mandan Chiefs (5-11 in-region) to open up the second session of games at 5:30 p.m.

The Vistas versus Williston caps the first night of action at Corbett Field.

The Class AA American Legion State Tournament runs through Wednesday (August 8).

Alex Eisen covers Minot State athletics, the Minot Minotauros and high school sports. Follow him on Twitter @AEisen13.