Gayton Post 31 celebrated last weekend’s Zone 3 championship at Franklin Field Thursday evening by taking some swings in the batting cage and throwing some pitches off the mound between the rain drops.

But for the gray sky, the atmosphere might have reminded some of spring training in Fort Myers or any other tropical setting, when actually, it was the training ground for this weekend’s Maine American Legion Baseball State Tournament. A laid-back practice was just what the Gayton coaching staff was aiming for two days before the heat gets turned up.

“Before you go into big games, you’re best served as a coaching staff keeping things simple,” said Gayton manager Todd Cifelli. “You’re not going to reinvent how someone hits or pitches in a three-day span. Just try to get everybody in the right frame of mind for what’s ahead.”

The five-day tournament opens Saturday morning at Augusta’s CARA Complex (Morton Field and McGuire Field). Action continues through Wednesday, when a state champion will be crowned and sent to Bristol, Conn., for the regionals, Aug. 14-18.

Bessey Motors, the Zone 3 runner-up which draws its players from Oxford Hills, Fryeburg Academy and Lake Region, will meet Libby-Mitchell of Scarborough, the Zone 4 champion, at 1 p.m.

At 3:30 p.m., Gayton, which draws from Lewiston and Lisbon, will meet the winner of the day’s first game. That contest pits the Zone 4 runner-up, Nova Seafood of Portland, which is made up of players from Class A state champion Deering, and Zone 5 winner Fayette-Staples of Saco, consisting of Thornton Academy talent.

The names that aren’t in this year’s tournament stand out almost as much as the ones that are going to be there. No Bangor, a perennial contender and last year’s runner-up. No unbeaten juggernaut such as last year’s champion, Monmouth. In fact, there is no Monmouth at all, along with a half-dozen other teams that dominated the field last year.

“It’s exciting for us, because the same old teams aren’t there,” said Bessey Motors manager Shane Slicer, whose team finished third behind Monmouth and Bangor in 2007. “But I’m sure the caliber of play is going to be just as good.”

Gayton has some familiarity with Fayette-Staples, as Lewiston scrimmaged, and beat, Thornton Academy in the high school preseason. Cifelli said Fayette-Staples and Nova have similar approaches at the plate, which means he won’t have to await the outcome of their game to name his Game 1 starter, which will be Kyle Neagle. The Lisbon right-hander shut out Brunswick in the Zone 3 semifinals.

“We like how Kyle’s throwing. He’s throwing strikes and his walk ratio is really good,” Cifelli said. “And we know whether it’s Fayette or Nova, they really get after people that fall behind in counts and walk people, and errors usually follow that. So we know Kyle is going to go out there and throw strikes and not walk very many guys, and we just have to make the plays behind him.”

Pitching and defense will be the keys for Bessey Motors, too. But Slicer has other worries heading into Saturday.

“I guess our biggest concern is injuries,” he said.

The injuries are continuing to pile up for Bessey, which already lost fleet-footed center fielder Nigel Cromwell during the regular season. Infielder/No. 1 starter Ryan Yates pulled his hamstring during the zone championship loss to Gayton on Sunday, and Slicer said catcher Matt Verrier is also banged up.

“We had a practice (Wednesday) night and (Yates) couldn’t practice, so I don’t even know if he can take the mound or not, which makes it a little stressing for our pitching staff,” Slicer said. “Verrier’s a little tweaked up, so that means our 2-3 guys (in the lineup) are questionable. Other than that, we had a good workout and we’re ready to go.”

If Yates can’t go, Dillon Trundy and Evan Humphrey, who both won their starts in the Zone 3 playoffs, will move up in the rotation, with Tucker Hill and Travis Fillebrown waiting in the wings.

“We have a good draw. I know (Scarborough) won Zone 4, which is always tough to do. But we don’t have Nova, we don’t have, like last year, Monmouth, which was our first-round draw,” said Slicer. “We’ve just got to take it game-by-game and inning-by inning and see what happens.”

Beyond winning the state crown, both coaches said, the ultimate reward for the tournament was getting their players exposed to the high level of baseball and to the college coaches who will be in attendance.

“No matter what, this is going to pay big dividends in the future, for the kids that are going to college next year and for our young pups,” Cifelli said.