Nick's Notes: Summer ball in rough spot

Daily News (West Bend, Wis.)
Published: Feb. 22, 2014

Summer ball in rough spot

Summer baseball is on its last leg. It won’t be too long before all baseball teams in Wisconsin will move to the spring.

Slinger made an announcement at its School Board meeting Monday, revealing its plan to move from summer baseball to spring.

It was a shock as conversations with Slinger Athletic Director Dan Karius revealed he had thought about leading Slinger out of the Wisconsin Little Ten Conference and into the North Shore Conference full time. The Owls play in the Little Ten in all sports except summer baseball, when they play in the North Shore. Those discussions came after the announcement last fall of Wisconsin Lutheran, West Bend East and West Bend West requesting to leave the Little Ten, putting the conference’s future in jeopardy.

After reading Karius’ comments regarding the reasons for leaving summer ball, it makes sense. He said it frees up the summer for the student-athletes. That is a topic that always seems to surface at various WIAA meetings, whether it be the annual meeting in April or regional meetings. Slinger baseball coach Steve Dummer said it also helps the student-athletes get a chance to build up bank accounts in preparation for college with summer jobs.

“It makes it more of a school sport again,” he said Monday.

The move is scheduled to be made for the 2015 season.

How many will follow suit? Don’t be surprised if more soon make the same decision. Last season, 55 summer baseball teams were sponsored by the WIAA. We will be down at least one for 2015.

During the 2012-13 school year, there were 382 spring baseball teams in Wisconsin.

Advocates of summer baseball argue that baseball is meant to be played in the summer, hence the phrase “boys of summer.” In addition, the weather is often more cooperative in the summer as teams in the spring often have to reschedule games because fields aren’t ready for competition.

They’re right with those arguments. However, in the grand scheme, allowing the student-athletes to have a summer vacation is gaining more support.

It opens up a lot of options for student-athletes to do whatever they want, whether it’s legion baseball or just relaxing, especially in a period where there is such pressure on the student- athletes.

In 1999, there were 110 summer baseball teams in Wisconsin, the most in the season’s history since summer baseball was adopted in 1965. Those numbers have declined each year. Another debate that always seems to surface around baseball is who is better: Spring teams or the summer teams? Those arguments go along with the WIAA and WISAA days when separate state championships were contested in the same sport. This is the same thing.

What this boils down to is opening up a student-athlete’s summer. With how often that comes up, don’t be shocked to see another school say no to summer and yes to spring.

USGA makes rule change to improve pace of play

Daily News (West Bend, Wis.)
Published: Feb. 20, 2014

USGA makes rule change to improve pace of play

Issue been a hot topic this offseason

By NICHOLAS DETTMANN

Daily News

Now that the price of distance-measuring devices has come down, the USGA listened to the industry.

On Wednesday, the USGA, one of two governing bodies for golf in the United States, announced it will allow distance-measuring devices in all of its amateur championship and qualifying events, starting in the spring.

“I’m all for it,” said Paul Ley, the club professional at West Bend Lakes Golf Club and coach of West Bend West’s boys golf team.

When asked why he was all for it, he said it is a way to improve the pace of play.

“I think that’s a really good step,” he added.

“It’s a very big help for golfers,” East boys golf coach Jay Krueger said, who also plays in amateur tournaments during the summer. “I think it speeds up play, especially for amateurs.

“I think it’s a good thing because at most of the amateur events, the participants are not familiar with the course. It allows you to know how far your shot is. It’s a huge help.”

The USGA’s championship committee announced the decision at its annual meeting in North Carolina earlier this month. The USGA said it reflects a joint decision with the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews in the United Kingdom. Distance-measuring devices remain banned at the U.S. Open, the U.S. Women’s Open and the U.S. Senior Open, and each of those events’ qualifiers.

A distance-measuring device is when a golfer can look through a lens and measure the distance of a shot. However, in most cases, if the device does more than just track the distance of the shot, such as measuring the slope of a green, it is illegal.

“It makes a huge difference,” Krueger said. “With scoring shots from 150 years and in, it's big. There's less guess work involved.

“All golfers are using them. The range finders help, especially if you're out of the fairway. It really simplifies it.” Of course, there is one underlining item that Ley warned golfers about: “It doesn't hit the shot for you. You still have to hit the shot.”

Pace of play has been a hot-button topic this offseason for the USGA. Earlier this month, the USGA held a “Pace of Play” workshop at its annual meeting in Pinehurst, N.C.

For decades, governing golf bodies were against allowing players to use these devices because it strayed away from tradition, an important trait with golf as it dates back to the 19th century.

Before the measuring devices, players would have to pace off their distances from yardage markers on each hole. That was why the pace of play slowed.

With these devices, pace of play could be improved by 10-20 minutes, Ley said, especially for an amateur golfer. It can also enhance a player's ability.

“You can find out how far you really hit your clubs,” Ley said, adding he believed the USGA has been getting pressure from the industry, such as the players, to allow these devices.

The WIAA made it legal only a couple years ago for cost reasons.

When the distance-measuring devices were introduced, they cost upward of $400-$500. So there was apprehension to allow the devices because of a possible unfair advantage between players.

The WIAA gave in after pressure from state coaches, arguing there are not limitations on the clubs in players' bags because those greatly vary from one player to another, so why not these devices? The coaches case was aided by the declining cost for these devices. Today, they can cost around $100.

“That was something that hindered them,” Krueger said.

Besides, golf has long had the reputations as a rich man's sport, so if players are going to play golf, they'll likely be able to afford the device, especially at a level above high school.

“Every golfer is looking for any legal advantage they can get,” Krueger said.

“Now with the price being lower, it does make for a level playing field,” Ley said.

Breckenridge adjusting to new game

Daily News (West Bend, Wis.)
Published: Feb. 19, 2014

Breckenridge adjusting to new game

West freshman a good fit for 1st-year team

By NICHOLAS DETTMANN

Daily News

MEQUON — West Bend West’s Emily Breckenridge has a mean streak about her that’s fun to have on a team for a hockey coach. The problem is, however, she plays for a team — a league — that doesn’t allow her to check to take out some of that aggression. As a result, she sometimes finds herself in the penalty box.

Her coach, Scott Matczak, doesn’t mind, though.

“It’s fun to watch her,” he said.

“It’s definitely an advantage for our team to having that,” he added about Breckenridge’s mean streak.

Breckenridge, a freshman at West, plays for the Lakeshore Lightning, a co-op high school girls hockey team with girls from Grafton, Homestead and Cedarburg that plays its home games at the Ozaukee Ice Center.

The Lightning is in its first year as a team. It is a varsity reserve, meaning it won’t play in the upcoming WIAA tournament, but played varsity teams.

“I was really excited,” Breckenridge said when she found out the team was created.

Breckenridge grew up playing with most of the girls on the team up until about two years ago. She decided to play for a Pee-Wee team with the Washington County Youth Hockey Association with the boys.

The two years with the boys played a role in the kind of player she is today. It had its pros and cons.

“The boys push you to skate harder,” she said.

“Playing with the boys, I feel like I’ve gotten more skilled because the boys push you harder.”

She also thought the long hair streaming out the back of her helmet was a target for the boys.

“Just being a girl, they always go after you,” Breckenridge said. “That’s just not fun.”

One of those boys was her brother, Nate Breckenridge.

The older brother was always tough on his little sister, but for good reason. He wanted her to be a better player. He didn’t take it easy on her.

“We would just go in the garage and play one-on-one against each other,” Emily Breckenridge said. “He would try to teach me new things to go around people.

“He really wanted me to get better and see my full potential.”

Breckenridge has another reason for having a bit of that mean streak: She is short, barely 5 feet tall.

Being so small wasn’t all that bad.

“When you’re small, you usually are faster,” she said. “I use my quickness to my advantage.”

Matczak couldn’t agree more.

“When she turns it on, she’s skating faster than anybody on the ice,” he said. “She has natural speed. She has a very good awareness of the game.”

At this level and with these rules in place, Breckenridge can exercise her strengths.

“You just play the game,” she said.

Breckenridge was introduced to the sport of hockey through her brother. However, when she was about 3 or 4 years old, she and her family often went onto a lake during the winter months to ice fish. The siblings skated from tip to tip.

Until she knew how to skate, she wore a pair of hand-me-downs from her brother and he pulled her across the ice.

Breckenridge thought about trying figure skating, mostly because she didn’t want to wear a helmet. However, it wasn’t tough enough for her.

“It was too girly,” she said with a smile. “I wanted to play with the guys.”

“I like the friends you get to make (in hockey),” she added as a reason she’s stayed with hockey.

When Breckenridge approached high school, she didn’t want to play for the Ice Bears, the same team her older brother plays on.

“My brother broke his leg while checking and that changed my mind,” she said. “I didn’t want to check.”

The girls can make contact on the ice, but they’re not allowed to check along the boards.

The Lightning took the place of a U-16 team at the Ozaukee Ice Center and that’s the team Breckenridge would’ve likely played for had the Lightning not gotten started.

After some time away from the girls she grew up playing with, she was proud and excited of how far they’ve grown as hockey players.

“They’ve been trying to make this team for like two years,” Breckenridge said. “My family was really excited about it. It was a new opportunity to play girls hockey.”

The Lightning are 4-9-1 this season. Breckenridge is fourth on the team in scoring with four goals and four assists in those 14 games.

“It’s been an experience,” she said. “We don’t care if we win or lose. We just want to have fun. Like in our first game, we were losing 7-0 and we were all having fun.

“We didn’t care. It was our first-ever game with the Lightning.”

The Lightning started 0-4 before it won three straight games, including two victories by a total score of 13-2 over Arrowhead.

Breckenridge is the lone West Bend resident on the team, which is a bit of a downfall. She can’t talk to other members of the team about what happened in school. Yet, she said the team does a nice job of being friends with everybody.

And, most importantly, she’s having the most fun in hockey since she was about 6 years old when her Squirt team made it to state.

As for that aggression, it’s gotten better. However, early on, she often fought off the instinct to go check somebody. And other times, she found herself thinking about it in the penalty box.

“We talked about it the first couple weeks and I remind her here and there,” Matczak said. “It’s kind of an advantage for her to come from that.”

East junior Smales qualifies for state in 2 events

Daily News (West Bend, Wis.)
Published: Feb. 18, 2014

East junior Smale qualifies for state in 2 events

Suns advance 2 divers

By NICHOLAS DETTMANN

Daily News

CEDARBURG — West Bend East’s Mike Smale felt confident about his time in the 200-yard individual medley during Saturday’s WIAA Cedarburg Sectional.

Then he saw what place he finished: seventh.

“Placing seventh at the sectional puts doubts in your mind,” Smale said.

When the cut times were announced Saturday night, Smale was relieved.

“I’m extremely excited,” he said. “This year, especially at the West Bend invite, the IM has been tough. There’s been doubts in the IM.”

Smale swam the 200 IM in 2:01.76 and the 100 breaststroke in 1:00.95, breaking his school record, to advance to the state championship meet Saturday in Madison.

Also advancing to state for East are divers Owen Gluck and Dakota Skenandore.

“That’s really great,” East coach Jim Sachse said. “I’ve had it in the past where we’ve had three divers make it to state. To get to two very quality divers there, it’s going to be very exciting. Hopefully they can make it to the top 16.”

Arrowhead won the sectional with 371 points, ending Cedarburg’s three-year reign of the sectional. Cedarburg scored 306 points.

Menomonee Falls/Germantown/ Hamilton co-op was sixth in the 12-team sectional with 215 points.

East finished eighth with 175. Hartford Union was ninth with 66 and West Bend West was 10th with 44.

“They swam excellent,” Sachse said. “In every individual event, they had their best times. That’s really great.”

Hartford and West didn’t advance anyone to state.

At the beginning of the season, however, Orioles coach Kristen Jenkyns didn’t know what to expect as it was her first year with the team.

“I’m thrilled,” she said. “I thought the guys did really good. A lot of best times, which is hard to pull off.”

“We tapered fully for conference,” she added. “For them to be able to hang on for another week and almost get best times, I was really proud of them.”

East had hoped to get a relay or two to state. Its 200 medley and 200 free relays missed the cut by about 1.5 seconds.

“I had a feeling that they wouldn’t make it,” Sachse said. “We knew we were going to be close. After the times came out, they weren’t down. They knew they had done a really good job.”

In the 200 IM, the top eight qualified for state, which is unusual.

“The whole sectional is really fast,” Smale said. “It’s surprising with how fast the sectional is getting.”

He wasn’t 100 percent confident with his IM because he thought his backstroke split was off.

“Every time I swim it, it seems like the splits are lagging in the backstroke,” Smale said. “The backstroke was tough and by the very end of the race, I felt really tight and sore. Sometimes I don’t feel like I’m catching the water really well.”

He made up for it enough in the other three splits.

“I thought it was a pretty good time,” Smale said of his IM. “I was really happy with it.”

As for the breaststroke, Smale hopes to break one minute after he took third Saturday.

Gluck will make his third appearance at state diving, while it will be Skenandore’s first trip to state.

“He feels really good on the board,” Sachse said of Skenandore. “I think another year of experience has helped.”

The Suns were disappointed they couldn’t get a relay to state. However, they weren’t discouraged.

“I’m not disappointed because they swam so well,” Sachse said. “It would’ve been a plus to get a relay or two to state.

“It’s something for the juniors and sophomores can concentrate on for next year.”

John Seiler of the Menomonee Falls/Germantown/ Hamilton co-op won the 100 butterfly (51.31).

Nick's Notes: How to create success

Daily News (West Bend, Wis.)
Published: Feb. 15, 2014

How to create success

Tradition. That’s a word that gets tossed around a lot in the world. Sports is no different. Tradition. How is tradition developed?

Well, it’s quite simple. For the sake of this argument, we’ll consider how tradition is developed in sports. In sports, tradition is developed through repeated success. Take West Bend West’s baseball program as an example. The Spartans have a tradition — repeated success — of good baseball teams, often playing for conference and state championships.

How is this created? Commitment and dedication.

People, especially athletes, want to be a part of good things. Who do you know wants to walk into a negative situation? Not many.

Thus, continuing to allow open enrollment is a hinderance on a community’s ability to create a tradition.

Washington County is a victim of the open enrollment rule in Wisconsin simply because of how close so many communities are to each other. Open enrollment allows students to pick which high school he or she wants to attend, disregarding their geographic location. With communities like Hartford, West Bend, Slinger and Kewaskum close to each other, it is quite possible for students to head to certain schools for its athletics, rather than staying “close to home.”

Too often we are seeing kids who live in Slinger attend Hartford Union High School. Or a student from West Bend go to Slinger.

Why? Academics? Maybe. It’s hard to believe. What open enrollment also allows schools to do is recruit. While it is against WIAA rules to recruit, it is almost impossible to prove it’s taking place.

All a student has to say something along the lines of “I live in Slinger, but I want to go to West Bend because it has better academic options.” Can we prove that student is lying or telling the truth? No.

Where is the tradition?

Eliminate open enrollment and you eliminate recruiting.

A lot of schools who have asked to move from one conference to another is mostly citing lack of being able to be competitive as a reason. Communities are losing student- athletes to other communities because of a lack of competitiveness so they want to go elsewhere. That’s when recruiting takes place.

A while back, I had a conversation with Kewaskum baseball coach Doug Gonring about some of the issues underlining the West Bend athletics program as it tries to resurrect its football teams. One point he brought up was an excellent one.

He said the students of West Bend should go to the school their parents went to and not the first sibling choose the school for the rest of his or her siblings.

Think about this: a parent or parents who went to West may find themselves rooting for their son and or daughter who go to East or vice versa, maybe because the volleyball team is better at School A than at school B. That creates split support for the parents. Who should they root for? East or West?

Those two changes can and will go a long way to establishing a proud tradition.

An elite club

Daily News (West Bend, Wis.)
Published: Feb. 14, 2014

An elite club

4 area icons to be inducted into WBBA Wall of Fame on Saturday

By NICHOLAS DETTMANN

Daily News

Former Milwaukee Brewers pitcher Don August grew up in the much-warmer climate of California, a state widely known for being able to produce top-notch baseball talent.

The reason why is simple: the weather.

The weather allows most players in California to play year-round. Other states — like Texas, Arizona and Florida — can say the same.

But here is a community in the upper Midwest with a knack of producing top-notch baseball talent. The reason is simple: dedication.

About 13 years ago, August was hosting a baseball camp at the West Bend Little League complex, along with Jim Gantner, another former Brewers player, and Milwaukee Braves legend Johnny Logan.

The weather, to say the least, was awful. It was cold. It was windy. It was rainy. They, especially August, thought there was no way a baseball camp was going to happen.

Ah-ha!

Much to his surprise, a large contingent of young and eager baseball players walked up to the field ready to go. August couldn’t believe his eyes.

“These people are dedicated,” he said.

In the years since then, August has been impressed and enjoys rubbing elbows with the baseball people of West Bend. And he’ll do it again Saturday night for the West Bend Baseball Association’s Wall of Fame Diamond Dinner and Benefit. The event begins with a cash bar, silent auction, raffle and autographs at 5:30 p.m. Dinner is at 6:30 p.m. and the program is at 7:30 p.m. at the Columbian in the town of Barton.

The WBBA will honor four new members to the Wall of Fame: Fran Hofmaier, John Jazak, Ilo Rauscher and Chuck Walter. They will be honored a second time this summer when their names are written in stone at Regner Park.

“It means a milestone for me,” Jazak said. “This has put everything in perspective.”

Jazak will be the only inductee in attendance. Hofmaier and Walter will be inducted posthumously, and Rauscher, who lives in Texas, is unable to attend.

Jazak wasn’t feeling well this week and was taken to the hospital. He promised that it wasn’t nerves.

“I can’t wait to get there,” he said. “It’s not my forté. It’s a lot easier playing baseball than giving a speech.”

Jazak admitted he’s still trying to formulate a plan for his induction speech.

August will be the keynote speaker for the event.

“There are baseball communities. That’s what West Bend is,” August said. “I’ve heard the stories. They talk about their Land O’ Lakes teams. The people go way back. They have these great people.

“They’re good solid baseball teams and it comes from the people that were ahead of them that started this transition. It’s no wonder they’re this good in high school.”

Jazak pitched for West from 1972-75 and went on to set a number of school records, most of which still stand to this day, including his 1.20 career ERA. In his senior season at West, he was 8-3 in 82 2/3 innings pitched, recording 138 strikeouts, 41 walks, 31 hits and 11 runs, but only one was earned, leaving him with a 0.08 ERA. He signed with the Chicago White Sox in 1975 and he is a 10-time Land O’ Lakes All-Star.

“It was a part of my life,” Jazak said of baseball. “I just enjoyed being around the game, around my friends.” Hofmaier was nicknamed the “Southpaw Sensation.” He pitched at the University of Nebraska from 195255 before becoming a standout pitcher for area teams Slinger (1958-61), Lannon (1962-63) and West Bend (196468). He was the inaugural winner of the Rock River League MVP award in 1959. He died in November. He was 80.

Rauscher was a five-time Land O’ Lakes All-Star, playing for 20 seasons in the league, and was a three-sport athlete at West Bend High School from 1950-54. In 1954, his pinch-hit grand slam led West Bend to the Little Ten Conference championship over Mayville. He also helped the West Bend Lithias win 37 straight games in a three-year period during the late 1960s. Walter’s biggest contribution was the development of The Threshold Inc. benefit game, which was played annually for more than 25 years, starting in 1956. The goal of the game was to raise money for the Washington County Association for Retarded Citizens. Walter died in 2002. He was 78.

“West Bend has been enriched with baseball players,” said Willie Mueller, WBBA president and a Wall of Fame inductee. “Not many small cities can say stuff like that. Baseball has done well in the West Bend community.”

Jazak added, “It puts me in a very elite club and I’m proud of that.”