Youth baseball club in northeast Minnesota helps expose high school players to college scouts

Baseball players in northeast Minnesota face special challenges, starting with the inclement weather in the spring that leads to a lack of opportunity all year long.

This hasn’t deterred the region from developing its most talented and deepest group of high school boys of the summer in 2025.

The region is reaping the benefits of the Minnesota Expos Baseball club team formed 11 years ago in Duluth. A nonprofit organization, it was founded by Seth Marsolek and Tom Berrisford, parents of students at Marshall School — a K-12 private college preparatory school in Duluth — when their sons were 8 and 7 years old in 2014.

Four players associated with the program are headed to Division I colleges, another is bound for one of the top Division II schools in the nation and a sixth is one of the top hockey players in the state and has elected to go that route instead.

“Back in 2014 we just wanted to create an opportunity for them to play a little bit more, challenge the kids and enjoy the game,” Marsolek said. “We ended up playing two local community events and took one trip to Wisconsin Dells, where we ended up getting beat badly by three teams a couple years older than us. Many of us look back on that moment as a turning point and a motivating factor for the kids at a very young age. Humble beginnings, to be sure.”

Marsolek’s son, Owen, a senior, is a pitcher, first baseman and outfielder for the Hilltoppers. He’s headed to Western Kentucky. Berrisford’s son, Max, also a senior at Marshall, is a catcher and third baseman and is bound for St. Thomas.

Club members also include Proctor senior pitcher and outfielder Nick Terhaar, who is going to Iowa; Esko senior outfielder Sam Haugen, who will next play for Minnesota State Mankato; Cherry junior shortstop Noah Asuma, who is committed to the Gophers; and Hermantown senior catcher, pitcher and infielder River Freeman, who will play hockey in the future.

All of them grew up handling the howling wind off Lake Superior and the blustery conditions commonly in place at Wade Stadium, the program’s home field in Duluth. The weather affects their ability to perform, worsens field conditions and even changes a ball’s trajectory.

“The weather up here is brutal five months out of the year,” Marsolek said. “At some point, I figured that would catch up with our oldest group and we would see them surpassed developmentally. That didn’t occur.”

The Expos’ founders have striven to keep the club team from hurting high school programs. They never planned to bat leadoff in developing ballplayers.

“We’ve worked very intentionally to maintain positive relationships with our local community associations,” said Berrisford, who also serves as an assistant coach with the Hilltoppers. “We make it clear that their local youth baseball organizations need to come first. That has allowed the organization to keep very positive relationships with our communities, allowing for shared resources and raising the overall profile of northern Minnesota baseball together. One always supports the other in a world of finite resources.”

The Expos are now a nine-team program, the youngest being the 8-and-under group. The oldest is a 16-and-under team.

“We never have had an intention to have a team at every age level but were willing to open new teams and create a positive experience for them,” Marsolek said. “As the years went by, families younger than us took notice of what we were doing and asked if they could do the same. At some point, that mode of operation just never stopped.”

As more coaches and families expressed interest in being associated with the club, the founders expanded. A majority of teams are coached by the dads of players.

“We put a lot of trust in the families that are involved,” Marsolek said.

Asuma played with the organization for three years. Haugen for five seasons. Haugen’s father, Ben, is Esko’s coach, and works with the Expos.

“Not all our groups will run the entire journey together as many things can get in the way of a group being able to continue year after year,” Berrisford said. “Our northern Minnesota baseball ecosystem is both talented and delicate all at the same time, so when we are able to see a group complete the entire journey together that is something we celebrate both publicly and privately.”

In 2022, the group won the Midwest Premier Super 15 national tournament at Creekside Park in Kansas City, Mo. The Expos were allowed to play in the invitation-only tournament as a guest team.

“That was the most fun I have ever had playing in a tournament,” said Max Berrisford, who as of Wednesday is 3-0 on the mound with 1.24 ERA and 23-to-1 strikeout-to-walk ratio. “We were playing some big-time competition. It makes you so much better when you start playing super competition at a young age.”

A year later, the Expos finished third out of 96 teams at the Perfect Game Elite World Series in Hoover, Ala. They went 6-1 during the week, with many collegiate coaches and pro scouts in attendance.

“The Expos was the first competitive baseball I played,” Terhaar said. “A lot of coaches and scouts were watching. We were benefiting from being seen.”

Terhaar is a prime example. A 6-3, 225-pound righthander, his fastball was hitting the upper 80s before his sophomore season. Terhaar’s four-seam fastball clocked in at 95.8 mph in his final bullpen session before the 2025 season. He also throws a circle changeup, spike curveball and slider, and he is developing a cutter.

“There is exciting talent in the Northland,” said Owen Marsolek, a crafty lefthander who is 5-0 with a 0.69 ERA and 73 strikeouts in 40⅔ innings. “I’m excited to see what this group can do at the next level, in the long run.”

For the founders, there is still plenty of work to be done.

“We don’t have the training resources or facilities that the larger metro clubs have,” Berrisford said. “We are not a business, do not have a big campus or full-time staff. We want to find a way to open a facility for our families. A place to come to [and] call our own. To this day, we have not done that but hope to at some point.”

In their third year, the Expos combined with another club team so its top players could continue playing in the offseason. The organization was invited to join the Soldier Spects National cooperative for the fall and winter seasons. The Soldier Spects National is composed of several of the largest clubs throughout the Midwest.

“This provides each club’s most talented players the platform to be seen at the highest level nationally,” Berrisford said. “For many of our players, this opportunity has been essential in their recruiting and developmental processes.”

Terhaar attests to that.

“It was career-changing for me,” he said. “It has been very rewarding. We broke the ice for baseball in the area.”

That remains a benefit to baseball in northeast Minnesota.

“Much of what they have done together has never happened before in our area. They have opened many opportunities for the kids that come behind them,” Marsolek said. “In its simplest form that legacy of breaking down barriers and creating opportunities that never previously existed is what this group should be known for.”