Cedar Rapids feels like good home for 3A and 4A Iowa high school state baseball tournaments

CEDAR RAPIDS — Monday’s Day 1 of the five-day state Class 3A and 4A baseball tournaments at Veterans Memorial Stadium was weird, but not enough to send the event into a weeklong tizzy.

It rained at the stadium in the second inning of Monday afternoon’s second game, the 3A first-rounder Marion eventually won over Center Point-Urbana. It rained hard. Really hard. For quite a while.

The weird part was the deluge simply hung above the stadium. In most of Cedar Rapids, it either remained dry or the rain wasn’t enough to give gardens a decent soaking.

“You could have gone 2 miles either way and we’d have been playing,” said Dubuque Wahlert Coach Kory Tuescher.

His team traveled from Dubuque to Cedar Rapids Monday afternoon, watched it rain, then got the news their scheduled 7:30 p.m. 3A game against DeWitt Central was postponed until 9 a.m. Tuesday because of the rain delay that lasted three hours.

Frustration and irritation temporarily set in for the Golden Eagles as they returned home for the night knowing they’d have to get up mighty early the next morning to take the same bus ride.

“We’re just one team,” Tuescher said. “I credit Andy (Iowa High School Athletic Association assistant director Andy Umthun) and his staff for doing what was best for everybody.

“We — myself included — went through about 30 minutes last night of being mad and like ‘Why, why, why?’ Once we switched how we were thinking and acting, and talked to our guys about that, it was awesome.

“My alarm went off today at 4:30. We started texting everybody. Not one guy was late for the 5:20 departure out of Wahlert. When we pulled into Marion about 20 minutes out, we put the Bluetooth on and we were jamming on the bus. I knew right then we were ready. There was no ‘Holy cow, it’s 6:20 in the morning.’”

The top-seeded Golden Eagles then engaged in quite a pitching duel with Central. Wahlert scored the game’s only run on a wild pitch in the bottom of the seventh inning, and thus will bus back to Cedar Rapids Wednesday for its 3A semifinal against Sioux City Heelan.

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Had the stadium’s drainage system and grounds crew not been as reliable as they are, Monday’s delay would have been much longer. It would have really messed with the schedule of the five-day event.

Alas, Tuesday afternoon brought more of the same. The skies darkened, the thunder rolled, and the rain returned in midafternoon during the fourth inning of the Johnston-Waukee Northwest 4A game. That pushed the remaining two games of the day back.

Tuesday’s 7:30 p.m. 4A quarterfinal between Iowa City High and Waukee was moved to Wednesday at 2 p.m. C’est la vie. The tourney will get back on track soon enough and this seems like an excellent place for it to do so.

It’s the first time Cedar Rapids has hosted a state baseball tournament in 50 years. It’s here this year because the University of Iowa’s baseball stadium is undergoing renovations and couldn’t host the 4A and 3A fields for a fourth-straight year.

Cedar Rapids has a better venue, and it’s not especially close. Iowa’s Duane Banks Field, renovations or not, is snug at 2,100 seats with an unfriendly parking situation. Vets Memorial seats 5,300, more than enough to handle the tourney. Parking is good. So are the stadium’s seating and concourse.

“It’s awesome,” said Cedar Rapids Kennedy Coach Bret Hoyer. “The venue is just first-rate.”

Hoyer could afford to be magnanimous after his Cougars scored four runs in the bottom of the sixth for a 6-3 first-round 4A win over Pleasant Valley Tuesday, but he’s seen a lot of state tournaments. He’s coached in a lot, actually.

This is Kennedy’s 15th trip to state under Hoyer, but its first since 2015. It’s great to play it at home for reasons of comfort, but there’s more to it than that for the Cougars.

“So many friends and family and alumni are here,” he said. “Everybody gets to see these kids and what they’re made of.”

Hoyer has terrific ballplayers. All the teams here do. They’re playing in a pro stadium that isn’t too large to swallow them. It is, however, big enough for them to get the stage they deserve.

Let’s do this again here sometime. Like next year, and thereafter.

Comments: (319) 398-8440; mike.hlas@thegazette.com