Norway recalls its 'Final Season'

NORWAY - You can hear a train in the background as you talk to him over the phone. The old Union Pacific passing through the edge of town.

Some things never change.

Kyle Schmidt still lives in his hometown, just can't move anywhere else. It's been 20 years since he was part of Norway High School's final graduating class, its final baseball team.

Its 20th and final state championship. Unbelievable how time flies.

"Twenty years since graduation. It certainly went by fast," Schmidt said. "When it first happened, we didn't think too much about it, really. We were born and raised out here with our brothers and friends, playing baseball.

"But the whole thing is kind of surreal now when I think about it."

Surreal is one way to describe the story that spawned the movie "The Final Season." Schmidt had a two-strike count against him, with two outs and nobody on base in the seventh inning of the 1991 1A championship game.

Norway trailed South Clay by a run. This game was over.

"What I remember most is I thought we were beat," said teammate Shawn Moss.

"I was praying on the bench," teammate Jim Walter said. "I had my hands together, my arms folded on my legs and my head down. I just thought to myself 'It can't end this way.'"

Adding to their doubt, though they would never say it, is Schmidt had 13 previous state championship at-bats without a hit. Not one.

"I didn't realize that until I read it in the paper the next day," he said.

"Honestly, I was pacing in the third-base coach's box, trying to figure out what I was going to tell them after the game," said Kent Stock, their coach. "Their only goal was to win the state championship."

But there was no way Iowa's baseball capital was going to lose its final game. Not going to happen.

The baseball Gods were never going to allow it.

Schmidt smoked a ball off the center-field fence for a double and scored when ensuing hitter Brad Groff, also facing a two-strike count, doubled him home. Norway got three runs in the top of the eighth for the victory, 7-4.

A script written for a movie.

"A lot of things escape your memory over time," said Eric Frese, one of five seniors on the team. "But that memory is still pretty vivid. Especially this time of the year, tournament time. It always come back."

"Everybody played baseball for so long," sophomore catcher Brad Day said. "There was not a lot to do in town. We only had two or three sports at the school. We got just as geared up to play basketball as we did baseball. But there was the generation of baseball players before us that taught us how important the game was."

Despite much public outcry, it was decided in 1990 that Norway would consolidate with Benton Community High School in Van Horne. Legendary coach Jim Van Scoyoc hated the decision and took a professional coaching job in the Detroit Tigers minor league system when he wasn't offered a teaching contract at the new Benton.

That left then 29-year-old Stock to lead Norway's final team. A successful volleyball coach at Belle Plaine, he had been hired by Van Scoyoc as an assistant for Norway's 1990 Class 1A state championship team.

"He did a great job," Walter said. "He came in and didn't try to change anything."

"He was an assistant (in 1990), so that helped. We knew him," Moss said. "He didn't change things. We had a lot of seniors that year, and he trusted us, just let us play. Baseball is not made to be a difficult thing. It's a simple thing."

But this was not a simple coaching situation. Stock knew he had a nearly impossible job.

For one thing, he had a reporter from the Des Moines Register there daily to document the season start to finish. Then his best player, Tyson Kimm, decided to move to San Diego for his senior season to be with his father, Bruce, a legendary former Norway player who was a coach for the Padres.

"I felt a lot of pressure. I get asked that question all the time," Stock said. "Not from the community. The community left us alone. But, internally, I definitely felt the pressure. It was 'Man, we've got to win.'"

Which they did, of course. Moss shutout Twin River in the state tournament semifinals, 7-0, setting up the final game of the final season and that miraculous ending.

Unnoticed, Schmidt had been pulled aside by his uncle, Mark, immediately after the game and told his father, Francis, had suffered a heart attack in the parking lot at Marshalltown High School. As if this story could get any more dramatic.

"I didn't get to run out and get the trophy, or celebrate with my teammates," Kyle Schmidt said. "I had to run off to the hospital."

Francis Schmidt would be OK, and Kyle joined his teammates at a Marshalltown restaurant for a postgame celebratory meal and to relive the day.

That's something many of the 15 squad members have found themselves doing over the years as they stay in touch or simply bump into each other at their children's games. All but Frese (head baseball coach at Wisconsin-Platteville), Tim Arp (mechanical engineer in Peoria, Ill.) and Scott Hofer (attorney in Philadelphia) still live in Iowa, with all but batboy Jeremy Driscoll residing in the Cedar Rapids area.

Some things never change.

"All 15 guys have gone on to be very successful guys," Stock said. "And as their coach, that's what I'm most proud of."

"A lot of good times," Shawn Moss said. "Every time you go to a game, you think about all the good times we had."

"When you grow up there (in Norway), you don't know any better. That's just the way it was," Frese said. "But when you move away, you realize how hard it was. It's hard to win championships."