第61回秋季北海道高校野球大会 (61st Fall Hokkaido Baseball Tournament)

The first area of fall tournaments that I will be covering is Hokkaido. This will be ongoing as I update the spreadsheet. I'm working from the championship down, so please bear with me.

(As of 1/27 all brackets are up. Translation for teams is done only for the regionals and the Sapporo sub-region.)

The winner of the tournament was Mukawa. This was only their 2nd championship, and 5 years since their first. They defeated Hokkai Gakuen Sapporo in the finals 3-1. What's more impressive was that they were one of the 8 teams that had to play an extra game.

Mukawa also possibly benefited from Hokkai Gakuen Sapporo having to go 11 innings the day before to defeat Hakodate Daifuzoku Yuuto on a sayonara run 3-2.

The 20-team field had many past Koushien participants...

• Komadai Tomakomai fell in the 2nd round of the tournament to Hokushou 5-2, faltering late giving up 4 runs in the 8th in a tie ball game.
  
• Their counterparts, Komadai Iwamizawa made it to the semifinals before falling to Mukawa 14-6. They had gone out to a 6-1 lead in the first 2 innings, but then Mukawa scored 7 runs in the next 2 and never looked back.
  
• Hokkai fell in its first game to Mukawa 7-0.
• Shirakaba Gakuen too fell in its first game to the aforementioned Hakodate Daifuzoku Yuuto 4-1.

The fact that some of the usual suspects in Hokkaido showed up in the tournament means that we could see them come back around in the summer. Remember, these teams are the ones that will be qualifying for next year's Koushien.