Kee baseball team posts 23-17 record during 2014 campaign

The 2014 Kee baseball season finished with above average results with a 23-17 overall season record, but not necessarily at that same level in comparison to recent Kee baseball legacy. For the first time in 10 seasons the baseball Hawks fell short of an Upper Iowa Conference (UIC) championship, and for the first time in recent memory as well, Kee’s diamond dwellers played just two postseason tournament games, both of those shortcomings being the result of significant overall improvement in UIC competition this season, according to legendary Kee baseball Coach Gene Schultz.
“We struggled early on in the season, having some kids start the season late due to track and also having some early injuries, but once we came together we found out that we could be very competitive in an Upper Iowa Conference that was well above average this season,” Coach Schultz said. “We found ourselves out of the conference race early, played our way back into it mid-season, but then lost some games that we either had leads in or just couldn’t complete late rallies in, and we missed out on our 10th consecutive conference championship. That was true in our postseason as well, as a much-improved Postville team took us to extra innings for the second time this season, but we just couldn’t score the winning run when we needed it.”
Kee’s season record included a mark of 10-6 that placed the Hawks fourth in the final 10-team Upper Iowa Conference (UIC) standings, with five of those UIC losses coming to the three teams that finished above the Hawks, including sweeps suffered at the hands of top-two finishers South Winneshiek and Clayton Ridge/Central and splits with third-place North Fayette and fifth-place Turkey Valley. South Winneshiek finished the season with an historic 34-2 overall record that included its first-ever State Tournament qualification.
Losses to perennial powers and/or state qualifiers like Decorah, Mason City Newman, Clear Lake and Iowa City Regina also peppered the early half of Kee’s schedule, but perhaps tempered the Hawks for some late-season momentum that saw them win seven of their final nine regular season games, including a split at Class 4A Dubuque Senior. “Senior has a good squad that split with a Dubuque Hempstead squad that played its way into the State Tournament,” Coach Schultz said. “We played two tight games with them to earn a split and prove that we were playing good baseball as the season was winding down.”
That late-season momentum didn’t carry over as much into the postseason as Hawk fans have come to expect, as the Hawks won their first-round district game, 7-1, over a Wapsie Valley team with just two wins on the season before falling to Postville, 5-4 in nine innings, to have their season ended relatively early by a Pirate team they had just beaten, 12-0 in five innings, a week earlier.
“We struggled a little bit in our first district game against a Wapsie Valley team that wasn’t having a very good year but played us fairly tough,” Coach Schultz said. “And we just couldn’t find the right combination to get out of Postville with a win in round two. We had played them to extra innings much earlier in the season, and both teams came back on the other to force extra innings in that tournament game, but we just couldn’t come up with the winning run.”
With delayed starts and injuries weighing in on the slow start Coach Schultz previously mentioned, the Hawks were also “homeless” for much of the first half of the season, as continuing renovations to their Shooky Fink Field in New Albin were not complete enough for them to play on that field until about midway through the season. Kee was able to play its early-season home games on the City of Lansing ball field.
A total of six seniors led this year’s club, including Quinn Brennan, Chris Carroll, Jason Delaney, Jared Donahue, Nick Gavin and Matt Manning, many of them being multi-year competitors for the Hawks. “We had six seniors, all of them solid ball players,” Coach Schultz commented. “With Chris Carroll, Jason Delaney and Matt Manning in the outfield, I think we had one of the fastest outfields we’ve had in a long time, chasing down long fly balls for outs and taking away doubles and triples.”
As one might expect, those seniors dotted the leadership aspect in the Hawks’ final statistical numbers. Manning and Carroll paced Kee’s offense with batting averages of .352 and .325, respectively, Carroll also boasting team highs of 43 hits, 10 doubles and 33 runs batted in (RBI). Manning’s 47 runs scored and 11 successful stolen bases out of 12 attempts were also team highs, as was his on-base percentage of .497 that resulted in him being on base nearly every other trip he made to the plate.
That senior leadership also carried over to the pitching mound, where Brennan, Donahue and Manning shouldered 152 of the Hawks’ 249 innings pitched this season, Brennan pacing that effort with 55-2/3 frames on the mound. Manning and Donahue posted respective records of 7-1 and 6-4, Donahue striking out a team-high 59 batters and limiting opposition to a team-best .171 batting average. Manning posted a team-best earned run average (ERA) of just 1.69.
Also right in the mix of those leadership numbers was junior Ryan Kuhn, who threw 33-1/3 innings and a second-best opposing team batting average of .187 while also posting top-three team numbers of 33 strike-outs and an ERA of 3.78 on the mound. Kuhn also led Kee’s offensive starters with just nine strike-outs in the team’s most at-bats (122) while posting team second-bests of 27 runs scored and 25 RBI.
With Kee’s program experiencing its second consecutive season where it will graduate at least two-thirds of it starting line-up with this year’s graduation of six players, veteran leadership for future seasons is beginning to see a bit of thinning in numbers. “We’ll be missing six seniors from this year’s team, and we’ll only be returning two seniors and one or two juniors for next season who have considerable varsity experience,” Coach Schultz said. “We’re going to need some of our younger players to really step up next year. We may have a bit of rebuilding to do in the near future, but we’ve got some of those younger kids who will be playing some fall ball and who are already throwing the ball around.”
Although Coach Schultz appreciates those extra efforts of keeping in touch with baseball outside of the season, he also advises his players to be involved with other sports throughout the school year. “A school our size can’t afford to have kids specialize in just one sport, so we encourage kids to participate in as many other sports as they can to help keep them competitive,” he said. “Competing in other sports will keep them in shape and agile, and will help make them better ball players as well.”
Although recent changes for Coach Schultz have some people speculating about his return to the helm of Kee baseball, the legendary coach says he has not made a final decision one way or the other. “I’ve got some thinking to do on it,” he says of that decision. “I’d like to see renovation of our field to completion, and I still enjoy the game and the kids playing it.”
Another thing that Coach Schultz enjoys and appreciates as part of the game is the support his program has received year-in and year-out. “We really appreciate the fans and the community support,” Coach Schultz said. “We hope we can do some good things for them in the future.”