Wausau National chasing big dreams in Little League baseball postseason
RIB MOUNTAIN - Roger Stroming swung at one pitch after another inside the batting cage at Doepke Park in the early evening Wednesday as Wausau National coach Jeremy Jirschele squatted behind him, watching from behind the netting.
“You can’t guess at (the pitch),” Jirschele said as Stroming fouled a pitch off. “You were thinking curveball and were late on the fastball.”
A few pitches later, Stroming connected squarely with the ball.
“There you go, much better,” Jirschele said.
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The batting practice session came near the end of a two-hour practice as the Little League team went through one of its final tune-ups in preparation for its biggest road trip of the season.
National, which won the Wisconsin state tournament last weekend, is part of the six-team Great Lakes Regional tournament, which begins Aug. 6 in Westfield, Indiana, and is a final step before the Little League World Series. National is the first Wausau 11- to 12-year-old youth baseball team to advance this far since 2007.
“I have always wanted to do this,” said Brandt Rice, a 12-year-old catcher/first baseman/pitcher for National. “We got to state the last couple of years but never seemed to be able to do it. Now we’re finally there."
National enters the regional tournament on a five-game winning streak that culminated in a 13-9 win over Kenosha in the state championship game. National lost its first two games of the state tournament by a combined score of 33-5, which resulted in a team meeting.
“We weren’t playing our best in the first two games. We just talked about how we needed to come out with a lot more energy for the next game” Rice said.
The Great Lakes Regional is a double-elimination tournament and National opens play against a team from Hamilton, Ohio, at 3 p.m. Sunday.
Teams from Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky and Michigan will be part of the regional field. The tournament winner advances to the Little League World Series, which will be held in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, on Aug. 17-27.
Jirschele said he knows little about the Ohio team or any of the other five teams in the regional.
“There’s that unknown for both sides. It will be fun to just go get out there and compete,” said Jirschele, who also coaches the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point baseball team and heads the Jirschele Baseball Academy in Wausau. “The biggest message from me to (the players) will be, ‘Just go out play the game, enjoy it and have no regrets about it.’ We just want to go out with that (approach) and then we’ll leave the chips where they may lay and see what happens.”
Landon Parlier leads National with a .632 batting average and is tied with Jesse Osness and Blake Nichols with a team-high 20 hits. Rice leads the way with six home runs and 19 RBI and five players have driven in at least 14 runs.
National scored 59 runs in its five-game run to the state championship last weekend, but the team’s success is based off more than just offensive production.
Rice holds a team-best 1.38 earned run average and Blake Nichols has a 2.81 ERA. Lucas Hager, who leads the pitching staff with 12 strikeouts, has a 3.85 ERA.
The team’s balance has National on the verge of a trip to the Little League World Series, but Rice said the key will be for his team to not get caught up in the tournament atmosphere but rather remember what got them to this point.
“We have to stay calm and collected when we are playing,” Rice said. “We just have to remember that these are just kids we are playing. We are kids, too.”
Tim Johnson: 715-845-0731, or twjohnson@gannett.coml; on Twitter @timmyjo11
WAUSAU NATIONAL ROSTER
Brandt Rice, Taylor Lemanski, Caden Werth, Blake Nichols, Landon Parlier, Eli Gustafson, Turner Olson, Jake Pease, Braden Kapitz, Keagen Jirschele, Lucas Hager, Roger Stroming, Jesse Osness.