West Fork makes dugout improvements

SHEFFIELD – Newly-updated dugouts await West Fork’s baseball team and its visitors this summer, it only remains to be seen if those updates will be met with a 2020 season.

New head coach Tom Shreckengost inquired about replacing the surface of the enclosed dugouts shortly after he was hired to replace Lance Thompson.

“They’ve been enclosed for quite a few years,” Shreckengost said. “It was boarding that was deteriorating, and we had to stain them every year. When I was hired, and I’ve been watching baseball since I played there in the late 80s and early 90s, it has always been a deal where you couldn’t do the dugouts since the water table is so high.

“It just needed some TLC, so I brought it to Alex (Brayton) and to the superintendent (Mike Kruger), what if we tinned them, make them better, with school colors? I got some help from Chris Janssen, and started work. They look nice, it’s awesome.”

According to Shreckengost, it didn’t cost much, nor did it take long to do.

“All it really took was a few hours,” Shreckengost said.

A new banner, in which the first-year Warhawk head coach said is 6-foot tall by 40-foot long, will hang from the center field fence. That, too was donated by Janssen Construction.

In addition to the dugouts, Shreckengost got to work on the field, which he said is what is typically done by any baseball coach.

“We edged everything around the home plate area,” Shreckengost said. “(It was an) older home plate, dug that out and re-did that. We also re-did the bullpens, mounds, made them ready to go. Now, we’re just waiting to get the okay to participate.”

That is the pressing question for this season. After Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds closed school for the remainder of the 2019-20 school year, that put an end to the spring season and pushed back what was already a truncated baseball and softball season.

A decision will be made on the summer season on or before June 1.

“I talked to Alex (on Tuesday, April 21), when I was out working on the diamond earlier,” Shreckengost said. “It all depends on how everything ends up. He, as the track coach, was disappointed he didn’t get to have a season; I feel bad for all the kids who didn’t get to participate. Hopefully, things turn around.

“Hopefully, the world gets better so we can have a baseball and softball season. We can find out and maybe have a second half of a season: 15-20 games for a season is better than nothing. It might be a different look than the past, if we can have a season, we’ll get after it.”

Shreckengost said he was the traveling team coach for the group of kids who is among his step-son’s class, junior Kellen Cameron.

“I coached these kids in a travel team back in the day,” Shreckengost said. “When they were 10 years old up to 13 years, right up until they got into high school.

“Lance, unfortunately, retired after this last season. I wish he wouldn’t have, he was good with the kids. Everything he did, was always enjoyable. The district will miss him.

“I had some parents who asked if I would do it. So, I went and got certified and am ready to rock and roll. I’m excited, we have a lot of kids returning and a lot of kids with innings.”

He’d already started before the coronavirus put a stop to the progress he’d made with pitchers and catchers.

“We had pitchers and catchers going in January and then all this went down and we had to stop that,” Shreckengost said. “We still have kids working out, whatever they can do at home. We keep after them, hopefully they can do work there since I can’t physically work with them. It is tough as a coach to monitor.

“A lot of online, Zoom, Remind work; Making sure they are still working out and doing what we can.”