BELLE FOURCHE - The Belle Fourche American Legion Post 32 board made the decision at a meeting Monday night to play in Teener league baseball this season rather than at the Legion level.

The unanimous decision was made in part because all but one of the team's players was under the senior Teener cutoff age of 16.

"It was a question of numbers, because we had just one player signed up who was just barely 17," board president Tom Cooper said. "We lost several kids through graduation and were a very, very young team that was a true Teener. We got input from several players' parents who were concerned about safety going up against kids 18 and 19 years old."

Teener baseball, which is sponsored by the VFW, is for kids 13 to 16 years old while Legion baseball has an age range of 15 to 19.

The decision, while approved unanimously by the seven-member board, was not liked by all.

"I spoke in favor of keeping our options open until the deadline got closer," said first-year head coach Dale Hogen, "because you don't have to make a decision on Teener until June 10 and Legion's deadline is May 15."

Hogen said he believed the board made its decision to try to alleviate some of the uneasiness among the players who were wondering if they would be playing Legion or not.

"All of the board members have kids on the team except two and our first game is April 24 so we didn't want to wait to the last minute," Cooper said. "We wanted to be eligible to play in the Teener state tournament."

One of the reasons voiced for wanting to have Belle Fourche stay at the Legion level was to allow Jess Cooper, arguably the team's best player and a talented all-around athlete to play because he is 18 years old. However, Cooper will now play Legion ball in Spearfish after Hogen signed his release a week ago.

"That was relatively easy for me to do because he had his heart set on playing in Spearfish, playing with kids his own age and playing with his friends," Hogen said. "I believe baseball is for the kids and they should have fun and enjoy it. To me that is the point of Legion ball, to have fun and enjoy it.

"I tried to change his mind and made my best argument, but he wanted to play with kids his own age. It was hard to let him go because he is one of the best players in the area."

Tom, Jess' father, said the release came before the board voted on what level to play.

"The release was handled properly, we sent it to Spearfish and it was approved," Tom said. "Spearfish is the next closest team for him to play."

The decision of the other player over the Teener age limit has not been determined. He could play with the team during the regular season, but would not be eligible to play in the state tournament.

The move to Teener is also interesting because Hogen believes Belle Fourche is the lone team in the western part of the state to play at that level.

"There was discussion (Monday night) about who else played Teener because it is very popular in the East River," he said.

Despite the decision, Hogen believes he can field a competitive team with five kids who are 16 year olds and were starters on last year's Legion team.

"Three of those kids were in the starting pitching rotation, and if we can find some kids from JV we expect to be pretty competitive," he said.

Hogen, who coached in Newell for six years before working as the Belle Fourche assistant last season, said it can be difficult to get kids in small communities to play baseball in the summer and now this decision could create more uncertainty until the players make up their minds.