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Bobcats balance help and preparation

Marshalltown baseball team’s return to state tournament impacted by tornado relief

Not many people have experienced the wild swing of emotion that hit the Marshalltown baseball team.

Last Wednesday the Bobcats beat Iowa City High, 9-2, in the Class 4A Substate 3 finals to earn their first trip to the Iowa High School State Baseball Tournament in nine years.

Not 24 hours later, the boys saw their town ravaged by an EF-3 tornado that decimated parts of downtown and residential areas in the northern part of the city.

“It was so weird because we were so happy, then you go down the street and it’s just total destruction and you don’t know what those people are going through,” MHS junior Tate Kuehner said. “We just have to go play a game while those people are worrying about where they are going to stay at night or where they are going to find food the next day. It’s just crazy.”

Marshalltown head coach Steve Hanson said the team was planning on taking it easy on Thursday before really getting to work preparing to take on Urbandale in the first round of state, but then plans changed.

“I had a schedule, had all of that, I was down here at 4:30 getting some baseballs and at about 4:35-ish the sirens went off,” Hanson said. “I looked out to the west, blue skies and fluffy clouds. I thought ‘that’s odd, is this the first Tuesday of the month? Is it 9 in the morning? No. The sirens are really going off.’ I looked up to the north and it was gray and dark and I thought ‘oh, that must be it.’

“I went into the Roundhouse and many of our guys were already there, a few of our guys were late getting here, and then probably at 5:10 somebody on their cell phone had the clip of the courthouse top blowing off,” Hanson continued. “Our guys were kind of unaware maybe of the scope of that, they were saying ‘oh, that’s kind of cool, the courthouse top blew off,’ and we immediately got that reined in and said look, if the top of the courthouse just blew off then there is something much bigger that we don’t have any idea about.”

MHS senior Luke Appel was one of the members not present in the Roundhouse at that time, as he got caught up putting in a little bit of extra basketball practice at the Marshalltown YMCA/YWCA.

“I really didn’t know how severe it was until they let us leave and I saw the tip of the courthouse was off, then I knew it was going to be a long process of getting everything built back together,” Appel said.

Once the all-clear had been given and the storm finished its destructive northwest-to-southeast swath, Hanson said baseball was far from everyone’s mind.

“Our first priority at that point became take care of your own people,” Hanson said. “So we said ‘if there was anybody in the room that needs help, let me know and we will be there to help you. If your family needs help, let me know and we will be there to help you. If friends or neighbors need help, let me know and we will be there to help you.'”

Freshman Ethan Wertzberger and assistant coach Jeff Hoogensen both lived in the tornado’s path, so Hanson said the team decided it would go out before practice the next day and give both members of the Bobcat baseball family a hand.

“We split up, some went to coach Hoogensen’s and some went to the Wertzberger’s, but that was Friday morning at 8:30. It was still raw, there was nothing moved, nothing really accomplished at that point,” Hanson said. “I think the greatest hurdle was the organization, there wasn’t anyone, there was no one to ask, you were kind of on your own. We went out and helped the Wertzbergers out there and helped coach Hoogensen and then decided ‘boy, there’s need everywhere.’ We ended up helping the house to the north of Wertzbergers — the Pedersens whose son [Luke] was a cross country guy here — and everywhere you turned there was somebody who needed help.”

Senior Nate Vance said seeing the level of destruction that had occurred was jarring.

“At first when the tornado hit I really didn’t think it was too bad until I drove uptown,” he said. “It opened my eyes a little bit, went from kind of laughing around to ‘woah, wow, a lot of people are going to be impacted by this.'”

Because of the isolated nature of the tornado, even just a couple blocks south of the destruction seems completely normal. Hanson said that fact makes it hard to truly appreciate just how much need there is.

“You can easily fall into your own little world,” he said. “If you never go to State or Main, if you never go up there then it’s kind of out of sight, out of mind, but we’ve been there and it’s a tragic thing for our town and so many of our residents.”

The Bobcats wasted no time getting to work helping out, and senior Sam Irwin said while they were going around checking on houses and seeing who needed what, they found some fans along the way.

“Friday morning we went to go clean up one of the player’s houses and we ended up walking down the street and helping out an old guy and lady,” Irwin said. “He walked out and goes ‘oh, you guys are the baseball team? I love looking at you guys every day in the paper!’ Just that made me feel amazing and I’m sure it made the other guys feel amazing too.”

All summer the MHS boys had been the talk of the town, especially after an 11-3 start and a couple appearances in the top-10 rankings. Vance said now with this tragedy, he and the rest of the team feel like they can give the community something to cling to during this state tournament run.

“We were fortunate enough to not have it severely impact anyone on our team, and this gives us a little motivation to see if we can back the community up after such a negative event,” he said.

After helping out on Friday, the team discussed the plan moving forward. It could have just wiped its hands clean and turned its attention to the first state game, but that’s not how this team operates.

“We decided we’d practice that afternoon, but go back out on Saturday again and do some things,” Hanson said. “On Sunday we had taken care of our guys and they were squared up, but we wanted to see what we could do in the mornings to help other people.

“I think our guys are all respectful of the fact that a mile difference in the path of that storm, we don’t have locker rooms, we don’t have a field, we don’t have anything,” Hanson continued. “By virtue of them being out there Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, to go assist some folks, it gives you a really good picture of what’s going on, and it’s terrible.”

Coming back to practice after helping in the mornings has put a noticeable spring in the team’s step, Hanson said.

“This beats the heck out of pulling a chain link fence out of a big ball of rubble. We are playing baseball, that’s what we are doing,” he said. “We are trying to get better, we’re trying to make some improvements, refine some things specifically for Wednesday night and they will be on board. Just watch their energy level, they will be fine. As George L. Funk once told me, ‘they are not mining coal.’ This isn’t a real job, it’s not a real hardship, we get to go play.”

“There is no better feeling than going out and helping somebody in need,” Vance said. “We helped an old couple on Main St. and we were able to clean up her yard in an hour and a half, she came out and was just bawling. You could tell how grateful she was that we came out and to us we just gave her an hour of our time, just out here helping.”

When the baseball team has needed to call it quits for the day, there have been plenty of other volunteers from around the athletic world to take their place.

“Our guys can work from the weight room at 8 o’clock until noon, then I think they need to have some lunch and get ready to come back here in the afternoon,” Hanson said. “But also assisting in that process has been Allen Mann and Adam Goodvin in the weight room, and they have more kids than we have and more flexibility than we have, so they also have been out in the community. That’s starting to catch a little traction now, they’ve been out each morning. These people need help and we encourage them to ask.”

Appel said, while this has been an almost unprecedented level of destruction in the city, the way the community has joined in to help has been truly wonderful.

“Seeing everyone working together, most people don’t think Marshalltown is a nicer place but when stuff like this happens everyone really accepts everyone and needs everyone’s help, so everyone just comes together,” he said.

When the Bobcats take the field tonight at Principal Park in Des Moines to face off with Urbandale at 7:30 p.m., Vance said the entire city of Marshalltown will be out there with them.

“We are out here worried about whether we are going to win a baseball game on Wednesday, people are worried about whether or not they will find a spot to sleep tonight,” he said. “That puts things into perspective, I know there are people in the community that really want us to win on Wednesday night and I know we want to win Wednesday night. If we are able to win Wednesday night or even play hard and give ourselves a chance to win and that helps out people in the community, that’d be all we need. That’s a perfect goal for us.”

That might seem like a lot of pressure for the guys to go out and win over the J-Hawks, but Irwin said in his eyes the team is already winners.

“I don’t feel like we have to [win] but I think it would make all the guys feel really good about ourselves,” he said. “Whether we win or lose I think the community will still be behind us and it’s still a positive thing for our community in this time that’s very low.”

Win or lose, Hanson said he and the boys are far from finished with lending a hand.

“If we are still playing after Wednesday we’d be happy to come out Thursday and work,” he said. “Friday and Saturday I hope we are playing, but there are other people here to help out. We’ve got a lot of folks around to assist, a lot of young kids going out to help.”

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