Dan Pratt was hired as activities director for the Rockford School District, where he will supervise extracurricular activities for 800 students after being ousted as athletic director at Minneapolis Washburn High School.

The Rockford district said that Pratt, who spent 13 years as Washburn's athletic director before he was removed in a dispute said to have originated from a scoreboard purchase, has 20 years of experience in athletics and education.

At Washburn, Pratt was in charge of 24 sports, coached softball and boys' hockey, and taught physical education classes.

His pending removal at Washburn last April sparked a backlash among some students that was strong enough, along with other issues, to lead the district to remove Principal Carol Markham Cousins, who has been reassigned.

The district has yet to fill the principal and athletic director positions at Washburn but has been interviewing candidates.

STEVE BRANDT

Etc.

• The American Legion baseball state tournament, which will be held from Aug. 1-5 at the Braemar Field complex in Edina, will have an opening ceremony for the first time. It will be held at 2:30 p.m. on the first day and will be followed by a home run derby and a pretournament banquet with Gophers baseball coach John Anderson as the main speaker.

• Trailing 5-1, the St. Paul Saints rallied for five runs in the seventh inning and scored another in the eighth — on Ole Sheldon's homer — to beat host Fargo-Moorhead 7-6. Dwight Childs and Trevor Hairgrove each had two-run doubles in the Saints' big rally and Brad Boyer had a run-scoring single.

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