Juniors kick off season with Jackson tourney

By David Wilson and Jeremy Joffray

Southeast Missourian

American Legion junior teams will kick off their season with the annual Milton F. Nitsch Memorial Tournament in Jackson this weekend.

The eight-team round-robin tournament begins today. The teams will be broken into two pools, with the winner of each pool to meet in a championship game 7 p.m. Sunday.

"Most teams haven't played yet, so it's a good tournament with good quality competition for everybody to kind of see where they're at," said Gerald Adams, Jackson's general manager.

Sikeston, which won the tournament for the first time last year, and Cape Girardeau, which has also won the tournament once, are in pool B with Florissant and Imperial's Rock Legion. Kirkwood, Brentwood and De Soto will join Jackson in pool A.

Jackson has never won the tournament, but finished in the top three twice.

Like most of the squads in the tournament, Jackson practiced for the first time as a team on Tuesday, but Jackson coach Rex Crosnoe said he's not sweating that fact.

"Most of the guys have played all spring, so they've had a few days off and they're ready to kick it up," Crosnoe said.

Crosnoe's team is scheduled to play at least 40 games this season, including two more tournaments.