Bemidji State baseball snaps losing streak, shows season progress

Bemidji State finally turned one of its longest frustrations into a marker of progress. The Beavers beat Minnesota Crookston 6-2 at BSU Baseball Field in Bemidji to end a 21-game losing streak against the Golden Eagles, a run that stretched 3,298 days before the breakthrough arrived.

The Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference doubleheader showed both sides of Bemidji State’s season in one afternoon. The Beavers controlled the opener from the start and then watched Minnesota Crookston answer with a 10-6 win in Game 2, rallying for four runs in the top of the ninth to salvage the split.

For a team that entered the week still chasing its 10th win, the opener mattered as more than one result in the standings. It gave Bemidji State a concrete sign that the program has moved closer to competing with a conference opponent that had owned the matchup for years. The Beavers now stand at 9-29 overall and 6-21 in NSIC play, while Minnesota Crookston moved to 23-18 overall and 16-13 in the league.

The setting matched late-April baseball in northern Minnesota. Game 1 started at 1:32 p.m. in 74-degree weather with southeast winds at 16 mph, and Game 2 began at 3:58 p.m. with temperatures listed at 77 degrees and winds at 17 mph. Attendance for the second game was 317, a reminder that even a midweek split on campus still drew a local crowd at BSU Baseball Field.

The result also sharpened the season’s bigger picture for Bemidji. A 6-2 win against an established conference opponent does not erase a difficult record, but it does give the Beavers something they had not had against Minnesota Crookston in nearly nine years: proof that the matchup has changed. The split left Bemidji State with a fresh reference point for the rest of NSIC play, and a clearer sign that the program is not stuck where it was a year ago.