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Hanson steps down

Marshalltown’s 26-year baseball coach tenders resignation

T-R FILE PHOTO BY ROSS THEDE - Marshalltown High School head baseball coach Steve Hanson awaits introductions of his team prior to the Bobcats’ 2018 state tournament quarterfinal against Urbandale on July 25, 2018, at Principal Park in Des Moines.

There’s a lot of ways to try and get from where you are to where you want to be, but for the past 26 summers, the Marshalltown High School baseball program has followed two simple rules: Show up on time and do the right thing.

On Monday, longtime Bobcat baseball coach Steve Hanson followed his own guidelines by tendering his resignation, effective immediately.

And if immediately isn’t soon enough, you had better do it 15 minutes earlier because for the last 26 years, five minutes early has been 10 minutes late.

In an exclusive interview Sunday night, Hanson told the Times-Republican that the time spent trying to keep Marshalltown High School baseball competitive in the Central Iowa Metropolitan League has started to add up and maybe even take its toll on a 62-year-old man who for the last 40 years has known only coaching baseball.

“On a mild June night at 7 o’clock and the sun’s setting and things look magnificent on the field, that’s an amazing thing, but I think sometimes people naively lose track of the rest of the year,” Hanson said. “It’s a grind just to complete a season, but it’s always been way more than just showing up on gameday.

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“From weight room to grades to player issues on and off the field, it requires much more attention than a lot of people understand and I’ve done that for a long time and I always enjoyed it and understood for us to be competitive that we have to be diligent.”

If you’ve ever clutched a scouting report prepared by Hanson, you understand what he means to be prepared. If you’ve ever practiced pick-off moves and where the outfielders need to be to back up each and every potential accompanying throw, you understand Hanson’s attention to details. Bunt coverage? He already knows which side of the diamond you have a tendency to bunt to and has accounted for that in his gameplan.

There’s nobody more meticulous about what happens between the chalk lines, but so much of it is derived from the principles he’s trying to impart upon his players when they step beyond fair territory and into potentially foul ground.

“I know it’s cliché to say, but he is like a father figure to a lot of players and to myself too,” said Tyler Peschong, a 2008 MHS graduate. “He held you to a high standard, every person, no matter your role. He made you work for everything you got, but you always knew every single player who played for him that finished his career that no matter what, if there was one person in the world if you were in a tight spot would come have your back, he’s that guy.

“It wasn’t easy as a player, it wasn’t always fun, sometimes it was real work, but you always knew that he had your back and I think that’s something that’s really special.”

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The feeling, as they say, is mutual. When the Marshalltown High School baseball program honored the 10-year anniversary of back-to-back state tournament teams prior to a game against North Polk this summer, all but one former Bobcat returned to the MHS diamond, and it certainly wasn’t to stand in front of all the fans and be honored. It was to reunite with teammates and coaches and relish and relive the memories. Some came back from as far away as Seattle.

“When you have a reunion 10-11 years later and everyone shows up, that’ll tell you what’s actually important,” said Peschong. “I’ll take it to my grave that the people in the Marshalltown community, of the people that would talk bad about Hanson, 99 percent never played for him. They don’t get it, they don’t understand. No one wanted to miss the reunion.”

Winning helps, of course. Peschong played for a pair of teams that won 27 games or more, the last of them making it to state in 2008. But the records will indicate nothing is given for a Marshalltown team playing in the CIML.

The only assurance Bobcat baseball fans have known for the last 26 years is that, under coach Hanson, the local team will be better at the end than it was at the beginning and it will have a fighting chance to succeed in the postseason.

“There were some talented players that were around the age I was, and the guys that stuck it out knew how to work for it,” said 2002 MHS graduate Jeff Clement. “We put in more time than anybody else in the state, I’m sure of that, and they were longer practices without a single minute wasted. Even the water breaks were timed.

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“We had enough guys my age who wanted to win and would do what it took. All four of my years, in none of them were we the most talented, but we just did all the little things right.”

Being from Marshalltown and competing against the likes of Valley and Dowling, Waukee, Johnston and Urbandale, Southeast Polk and the Ankenys demands more than just “rolling the ball out there” as Hanson phrased it.

“In our situation in our league, we can’t just go through the motions and hope to find any kind of success, and that’s just a fact,” he said. “I don’t know if baseball is atypical of any other sport, but in our league you look around the Des Moines suburbans and you have to be well prepared and you have to be pretty good, and any given night you could get your nose flattened and then you’ve got to start over again.”

The years multiplied by the hours come out to be some pretty exhausting numbers, even for someone who has lived for the game for so long. Hanson began his coaching career as an assistant coach at Cedar Rapids LaSalle (now Xavier) in 1980, was an assistant at Vinton in 1981, and for the next four years was the head coach. He posted a 47-71 record there before becoming an assistant under Brad Clement at Marshalltown High School in 1986, a position he held for eight seasons before becoming the Bobcats’ head coach starting in the summer of 1994.

From there, you could start with the numbers, listing off career achievements and win-loss records from 26 years at the helm of the Marshalltown High School baseball program.

• Of his 614 career coaching victories, 567 of them were with the Bobcats.

• Seven state tournament appearances. Four state title games. One championship.

• Inducted into the Iowa High School Baseball Coaches Association’s Hall of Fame in 2011.

You could talk about the losses that are burned into his memory more than the rest, because, as he put it, “you go into games expecting to win and when you win, that’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. The hard ones are the ones you don’t get over the hump with.”

Hosting the state tournament? You bet. Losing it to Principal Park? Let’s not go there.

What’s next for the Bobcat baseball program? For once, not even Hanson knows.

“I think we’ve been scratching and clawing just to get up the mountain just to keep our head above water, and I think we’ve done that looking at the records, a state tournament here or there, we’ve been in the hunt,” Hanson said. “Nobody wants to play you if they don’t have to, and it takes a lot of work to get to that level because I don’t think we’ll ever be in any major sport a team that can just walk in the door, flex and say ‘hey, we’re here, we’re going to beat up on you.’ You’ve got to execute correctly, prepare, scout — all that takes time and effort. It’s a heavy-duty job.

“Like it, enjoy it, don’t feel the urge to be the person in charge of it.”

Both Clement and Peschong had a hard time imagining the prospect of somebody other than Hanson calling the shots for the Bobcat baseball program.

“It’s crazy to think that he moved to Marshalltown in 1985 and I was 2 years old, and everything I know about Bobcat baseball every single year that I can remember, he’s been a part of it either as an assistant or head coach,” said Clement. “This is the end of something that was pretty special.

“I don’t think there’s anybody more organized and put in more time than him. Obviously there’s no replacing that. It’s going to be big shoes to fill.”

Peschong concurred.

“I would give anything to have my son play for him. I played for a lot of different coaches in a lot of sports, and no disrespect to any of them, but there’s no one that was even in the same ballpark as him,” Peschong said. “On a year-by-year basis, they’re overachieving every year regardless of where they’re at talent-wise.”

Hanson signed off Monday after 34 years with the Marshalltown High School baseball program, having already retired as a teacher in 2013, with these as the final lines in his resignation letter:

“Finally, without dedicated and talented players none of our accomplishments would have been possible. I will be forever grateful to any player who invested in the program for the good of his teammates and hated losing more than he enjoyed winning.

“My hope is that the MHS baseball program will continue to be competitive in an ever-challenging environment. I will recall with fondness the efforts of our administration, support staff, coaches and players. It has truly been my pleasure.

“Yours in Bobcat baseball.”

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