PARK RIVER — North Dakota’s Babe Ruth baseball team is defending its decision to force a team from the northeastern part of the state to forfeit a game midway through the second game of the tournament.

Some called it cheating, but the Park River baseball team says teams have been doing it for years without controversy.

The Park River Gold Babe Ruth baseball team sailed to victory in the first game of the tournament, winning 20-4. They were leading 2-1 in a pitcher’s duel in the second game when it was abruptly ended.

“We’ve been told we’re cheating,” assistant coach Brett Omdahl said.

The Park River Gold team was told to forfeit the match.

“I thought it was a bad time to make an example of a program,” Omdahl said.

“It’s a tough situation, it’s heartbreaking, but at the same time you’ve got to do what’s right,” said Larry Grondahl, assistant commissioner for North Dakota Babe Ruth Baseball.

For the state tournament, teams are allowed to have a maximum of 15 players in their roster.

The Park River Gold team qualified with 12 players. So they added three players from the Park River Black team, whose season was over. Tournament officials approved the selection before it started.

“It wasn’t that anybody was trying to pull the wool over anybody’s eyes. We felt that what happened was okay and acceptable,” explained Jesse Irvine, president of North Valley Baseball.

He approved the additions to the roster of Park River, which hosted last year’s state tournament.

While the scheduling rule has been in place for decades, Irvine called it a “common practice” and in the best interest of the children and the development of their respective programs.

“I know three teams have supplemented their rosters with kids from other teams within their own programs,” he said of last year’s tournament.

“That rule has been in place for at least 25 years in Class B. We haven’t allowed it in a long time. If it was allowed in Park River last year, someone missed the boat. It was never brought to our attention,” Grondahl said.

Park River had to forfeit the match and were placed in the elimination pool, where they won one match and lost one match.

“According to the rules, they should have happened at all, but we didn’t want to punish the children who had nothing to do with it,” Grondahl said.

This topic is expected to be discussed during the autumn meeting.

“We really had to focus on a few things and make sure that, especially teams that have two of them going into a district tournament,” Grondahl said.

“If I could go back in time two weeks, I would do the exact same thing. I thought the idea was that once you get to the state tournament, you want to have the best players that qualified in the state of North Dakota play,” Irvine said.

The commissioners don’t want the controversy to overshadow the fact that Kindred won the North Dakota Babe Ruth championship 12-6 over LaMoure. The Vikings finished the season 28-1.

Matt Henson is an Emmy Award-winning reporter/photographer/editor for WDAY. Prior to joining WDAY in 2019, Matt was the lead anchor at WDAZ in Grand Forks for four years.