May 13, 2020 at 1:59 p.m.
Legion cancellation wipes out what could have been promising year for Rebels
Legion cancellation wipes out what could have been promising year for Rebels
The American Legion baseball season in Wisconsin was the latest domino to fall amid a slew of sports cancellations due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with the state legion organization officially pulling the plug on the season in an announcement made Saturday.
On the national level, the American Legion regionals and Word Series had already been canceled, but Saturday's announcement by the Wisconsin American Legion Baseball Association wiped out what was to have been a 20-game regular season schedule for the Rebels, along with regional and state competition.
"It's very disappointing that we aren't going to have any kind of a legion season this year," Huhnstock said Monday in a phone interview with the River News. "It is the way of the times. This coronavirus is a very serious thing and I guess it's better to err on the side of caution rather than get everybody infected or start a season and have to end it because there's an increased risk once people start gathering."
Rhinelander High School baseball coach Joe Waksmonski was also following the situation closely, as the vast majority of his players would have played for the Rebels this summer.
"I was kind of surprised too," Waksmonski said, noting that the WALBA waited until three days after its May 6 meeting to announce a final decision. "I thought if they were going to cancel the season, they would have just made the announcement Wednesday. With them delaying the announcement, I thought maybe they were going to try to finalize some plans through the state and maybe they would make a go of it. It came out Saturday that they canceled, it was kind of surprising."
Baseball, unlike many other spring high school prep sports, had a potential a silver lining in the legion baseball season.
The program, for those age 18 or younger as of Jan. 1, would have provided this year's seniors a structured season.
"It's really disappointing for our seniors, and we had a nice group of them." Huhnstock said. "It's a shame they won't get to play this year during legion. Some of them may be age-eligible to come back next summer once this pandemic is over with."
The Rebels went 16-9 overall last season and shared the Great Northern Legion Conference title with Medford after both went 7-1 in league play. The Rebels finished second in the Class AA regional tournament, losing to Antigo 4-3 in 10 innings in the final game of the tournament.
"I thought our roster makeup was going to be such where we were going to be very, very competitive at any level in the state this year," Huhnstock said.
The vast majority of last year's team was slated to returning, including a couple of age-eligible college freshmen - Martin Hoger and Josh Randolph. Both Hoger (UW-Superior) and Randolph (Concordia University-Wisconsin) - who were on collegiate rosters.
"We had some serious pitching coming back with Martin Hoger and Josh Randolph," Huhnstock said. "We weren't sure if Bryce Schickert was going to be able to come back and help, but we would have had two players that had spent all fall working out with their college coaches as pitchers, and potentially a third with Bryce who's an extremely talented baseball player."
Hoger was 3-2 with a 2.31 ERA last summer for the Rebels while Randolph was 2-2 with a 3.25 ERA.
Based on last summer, the Rhinelander was scheduled to have plenty offense back this year. Walker Hartman (.362, 15 RBIs) and Jacob Dreifuerst (.295, HR, 16 RBIs) were among the team leaders at the dish. Danny Zuiker (.302, 6 RBIs), Abe Laggis (.350, 9 RBIs) and Teagan Guckenberg were expected to provide plenty of speed at the top of the order and sophomore Joe Schneider flashed last year while splitting time between Babe Ruth in Legion, hitting .416 (15-36) with seven RBIs.
With the cancellation, Rhinelander baseball is in the same boat as the rest of the spring sports teams. Rhinelander High School is working to provide an abbreviated spring sports season for its student- athletes, with the WIAA allowing up to 30 summer contact days beginning July 1 for spring sports teams, providing social distancing restrictions have eased by that point. A proposal sent to district administration Monday, obtained by the River News, calls for the Hodag baseball team to practice July 1-2, 6-10, play Lakeland and Three Lakes in Antigo July 13 and host Antigo in a doubleheader July 15.
"I think what we're going to do with that is just try to make our practices and our get-togethers more game-like, as game-like as possible," Waksmonski said of what little remains of the 2020 baseball season. "Obviously we're not going to be able to do some of the drills and we're not going to be teaching defenses and things like that. I think we just want to get the kids out to play baseball - whether that's playing a different team or playing ourselves, we just want to get out and play. However that shapes up to look like, we'll figure that out in the meantime."
Huhnstock said, while most of this year's baseball season has been lost, he hopes players will be able to take advantage of the few remaining opportunities available, to help bridge the gap between 2019 and 2021.
"A lot will be determined as to what kind of participation levels we get with this July high school stuff and how hard they work out on their own," he said.
Jeremy Mayo may be reached at [email protected].
WEATHER SPONSORED BY
E-Editions
Latest News
E-Editions
Events
August
To Submit an Event Sign in first
Today's Events
No calendar events have been scheduled for today.
Comments:
You must login to comment.