Minnesota is getting lots of love on "The Bachelorette."
The Woodbury-raised star of the show, Michelle Young, brought her suitors home to Minnesota during the episode that aired Tuesday night — but was filmed in August, during warmer weather.
They threw out a pitch at Target Field and competed at U.S. Bank Stadium. They rode the ferris wheel at Betty Danger's in northeast Minneapolis and cruised on Lake Minnetonka in a pontoon.
"In Minnesota, it's tradition to get purified in the waters of Lake Minnetonka," Young told her date Nayte Olukoya before they jumped in, a nod to the Prince film "Purple Rain."
Young, 28, picked fellow Minnesotan Joe Coleman — dubbed "Minnesota Joe" — for the first one-on-one date.
At Target Field, they sported Twins jerseys and smooched, captured by the kiss cam. They then visited Woodbury High School, where they shot hoops in the gym.
As Young made 3-pointer after 3-pointer, she teased him about getting beat by a woman in a dress. Young, like Coleman, was a basketball star in high school, earning a spot on the Star Tribune's all-metro first team in 2011 as "perhaps the fastest player," the newspaper said then. Coleman was named 2011 Minnesota Mr. Basketball.
"I feel like Joe would have been my crush in high school," Young told the camera, "because he played basketball, he has a good head on his shoulders and he's good looking."
She noted the "magnetic energy" between them, adding: "It feels so good and it feels so right."
The pair then headed to Betty Danger's in northeast Minneapolis, where Coleman opened up about a botched foot surgery that sank him into depression. Without basketball, the former Mr. Basketball struggled to figure out who he was and what could make him happy.
"Ball was life, and that life was gone," he told her.
To have an injury take you out of the sport before you're ready is "a pain not everyone will understand," Young said. But she understood, and they cried together.
"Today was the most powerful, special, perfect, stars-aligning date I've ever been on," Young said. "I feel like two souls that have kind of been living side-by-side without even knowing it and ... today, we got brought together."
A group Vikings-themed date at U.S. Bank stadium featured lots of shouting and some fermented herring.
Young then headed to Lake Minnetonka with Nayte Olukoya, a sales executive who lives in Austin, Tex., and grew up in Canada. The two cruised the lake, picking up two of her friends at Lord Fletchers, a Lake Minnetonka institution.
The Minnesota dream, Young told Olukoya, would be to own a home on this lake.
"What do you think about Minnesota so far?" she asked him.
"This is awesome," he replied.
During filming in August, the cast stayed at The Marquette Hotel in downtown Minneapolis, and much of the episode was shot in and around it.
As Young was on her date with Olukoya, Chris Sutton stewed back at the hotel. He had attempted, in the last episode, to call Olukoya out for believing he had this competition "in the bag," speaking for Young in front of the group.
This episode, Sutton confronted the pair as they ate dinner. Young wasn't having it.
"I can speak for myself," she told him. "I want a man who is going to stand and support me when I speak and not a man who's going to speak for me."
Then she sent him home.
