By Becky Walz,
The Decorah baseball team has eight returning letter winners and a strong desire to find success again this season.
Leading the Vikings for his fourth season is head coach Adam Riley with a career record of 56-28.
The Decorah baseball team has eight returning letter winners and a strong desire to find success again this season.
Leading the Vikings for his fourth season is head coach Adam Riley with a career record of 56-28.
Cut short
The Vikings of 2021 had a core of 12 seniors who had played a lot of quality baseball to mix with promising juniors.
Decorah was strong in the Northeast Iowa Conference, winning the title with a 17-1 mark in the league and 28-6 record overall. They placed seniors Cael Luzum (pitcher), Briggs Duwe (shortstop/infield), Tyler Thompson (infield) and Kody Bodensteiner (outfield) on the first team all-conference list. Cai Brevig (pitcher), Gunnar Steine (pitcher) and Kyle Renken (outfield) were on the second team list, while James Marx was an honorable mention utility player.
Following such a successful regular season, Decorah had high hopes for the postseason. Unfortunately, it wasn’t meant be as Maquoketa invaded Viking territory and took a commanding lead early and stopped Decorah’s playoff run abruptly 10-3.
Decorah hit .352 last season, with a .469 on-base percentage and .491 slugging clip. The team scored 311 runs on 320 hits, with 15 home runs, 61 doubles and 10 triples. They had 108 stolen bases. The pitching staff compile a 2.49 ERA with 278 strikeouts.
At the end of the year, Decorah graduated seniors Luzum, Duwe, Thompson, Bodensteiner, Brevig, Steine, Renken, Marx, Brady Hogan, Drew Snyder, Matthew Smith and Noah Breitenbach-Dirks.
Coming back
“Going into the season we are feeling good about our returning players and multiple players returning to the baseball program after a year away due to injuries,” said Coach Riley. “This nucleus should provide plenty of excitement offensively and put us in position to score runs. Additionally, our athleticism will hopefully put us in position to play sound defense on a regular basis.”
Coach Riley starts with his eight returning letter winners from a year ago.
Senior Keenan Tyler was named second team all-conference last year. He finished the season with a .465 batting average, .535 on-base percentage and a slugging mark of .697. Tyler led the team with 47 RBI, 11 doubles and 23 stolen bases.
Storts was on the All-NEIC honorable mention list as a junior and returns after hitting .333 last season. His on-base percentage with .386 with a .524 slugging mark. The infielder provided 34 RBI and nine doubles.
Another infielder, Brody Young was a second team honoree in the NEIC during his sophomore campaign two seasons ago.
Other returning letter winners include Dane Frieden (pitcher), Joe Hjelle (utility), Thomas Ostlie (1B), Ethan Holthaus (OF) and Ben Wymer (OF).
The eight are joined by a host of newcomers including seniors Jacob Pipho (OF), Sam Kleiner (IF); juniors Brady Stille (P/C/IF), Casey Brickley (IF), Cale Donlon (IF/OF), Jackson Knoke (IF), Cade Olson (IF), Noah Spilde-Maki (P/OF); and freshman Kaden Alstad (P/IF).
Although the team is relatively young, the coaching staff is excited to work with the group of juniors and seniors, mixed with some young pitchers in the program.
Conference race
When it comes to the league, Coach Riley sees Waverly-Shell Rock and New Hampton as being the top teams, as both return a solid nucleus of players from state tournament qualifying teams a year ago. He also noted that Waukon had a young team a year ago that played their best baseball at the end of the season and should be much improved.
“We feel we have a chance to compete for a second conference title in a row, but it will not be easy. A new conference format will have us playing all double headers this year in conference play. This will result in a number of games that will need to be played differently than in years past as teams juggle finding pitchers to effectively put their teams in position to get outs throughout the season. Our green pitching staff will definitely need time to grow and develop,” said Coach Riley. “Hopefully we can provide enough consistent output to give ourselves the necessary opportunities to win while we work to improve our defense and develop a number of our inexperienced pitchers.”
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