CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa - The Luther College Norse (31-14) won the 2021 American Rivers Conference Baseball Tournament Championship Saturday, May 23 with an 4-2 victory over Coe College (36-7). With the title, Luther earns the American Rivers Conference automatic bid to the NCAA Division III Tournament with next weekend's regional site being announced tonight at 10:59 p.m. (CST) on NCAA.com. 

The championship game between the Kohawks and Norse was set up after each team won their respective four-team pod. The senior duo of Jack Greene and TJ Johnson propelled Coe College to the 2021 American Rivers Conference championship game with a 17-2 winner-take-all victory over Buena Vista in the Cedar Rapids pod championship. Luther fell behind early in the Waverly pod championship game but came back to beat Loras, 5-2, to advance to the single-game championship of the American Rivers Conference Baseball Tournament. Joe McKibben gave Luther an insurance run with an RBI groundout in the fifth inning. It provided more than enough support for starter John Colucci, who went the distance for Luther.

Luther's championship game appearance was the program's fourth (2007, 2009, 2016, 2021), with previous titles coming in 2007, 2016, and now 2021. The Norse were led on the mound by winning pitcher Nick Dufoe, who logged six innings while giving up just one run on six hits. Nate Loch earned the save for Luther, pitching 1.2 innings, giving up no runs and just one hit. Collin Chambers also tossed 1.1 innings, allowing one run on two hits. Kelby Johnson drove in two of Luther's four runs, one coming on a third inning sacrifice fly to center field that scored Cullen Stamp and the other coming on a seventh inning fly out that scored Luke Plunkett. Plunkett was the first Norse to drive in a running during the third inning, scoring Noah Sebben. For the third time in as many games Sebben homered, with this game's coming in the seventh inning to put Luther out front 3-1. 

Coe, who was ranked fifth in the central region heading into this weekend's tournament will await the NCAA's announcement later tonight to see if they receive an at-large berth to this year's National Championships. In response to the impact Covid-19 had in 2020, this year's NCAA Championship field will be made up of 48 teams in lue of the normal 58. The filed will consist of 42 automatic qualifiers and just six at-large bids. The Kohawks had three players record a multi-hit game in the championship winner-take-all, Isaac Evans (2-for-5), TJ Johnson (2-for-5), and Jordan Kaplan (2-for-5, 1 RBI, 1 run. Johnson's pitching record fell to 10-2 on the year after today's game. He threw four innings giving up four hits and two runs. 

This year sees the removal of the Super Regionals round and an expanded eight-site Regionals round, with the winners of each regional advancing to line up at Perfect Game Field at Veterans Memorial Stadium for the NCAA Division III Baseball Championship June 4 through June 9. The NCAA Championship Regional round takes place May 27-30. The American Rivers Conference and the Cedar Rapids Kernels (Class A affiliate of the Minnesota Twins), will host the Division III College World Series through the 2023 season. o