Ironwood Athletics ready for zone tourney

By JASON JUNO

sports@yourdailyglobe.com

Ironwood — Ironwood, Hurley and Gogebic all had strong seasons and they played in some epic battles against each other on the diamond this season. For instance, the Red Devils beat both of their rivals, but also lost to both in walkoff fashion.

Now players from all three teams, plus one from Ontonagon and a couple of recent graduates, have joined forces, and their American Legion team, the Ironwood Athletics, is 9-3 entering this week’s zone tournament in Gladstone.

“You never know how it’s going to go,” Athletics coach, and Ironwood’s coach, Cody Kurta said. “During the high school season, we’re all rivals, big rivals. Ironwood-Hurley are big rivals, Hurley-Gogebic are big rivals, Ironwood-Gogebic big rivals.”

It’s gone very well by all accounts. The players get along great and they’re playing some great baseball.

Kurta said the Legion teams they’ve been playing around the Upper Peninsula and northern Wisconsin don’t expect to lose to Ironwood. But they largely do. Ironwood is 5-1 against Marquette’s three Legion teams.

“It’s a glorified all-star team,” Ironwood graduate Rukus Betlewski said. “We’ve got some real good players. We’ve had a real good season so far.”

Ironwood hasn’t had a Legion baseball team since the early 1990s, Kurta estimated. He loves baseball. And older kids didn’t have an option to keep playing summer ball after they turned 16 previously (although a Babe Ruth rule change now gives them another option).

He thought about a traveling league until a friend suggested a Legion team. Ironwood’s Post 5 jumped on board. Once Kurta got things rolling and provided a roster, the Legion gave them $5,200 toward expenses for jerseys, equipment and anything else they needed to get the team started. None of the players have to pay to play, the Legion takes care of those costs.

They needed to come up with a name — Kurta said Devils, Northstars and Miners were obviously out as they wanted something neutral.

“We were just trying to think of something and I thought about the Athletics, just Athletic Club,” Kurta said. He insists he’s no Oakland A’s fan. “It was just kind of a random thing. I’ve seen that with a lot of other Legion teams, like Escanaba’s the Cubs, a lot of the other teams come up with MLB nicknames.”

The Ironwood boys picked the colors, which are based on the Ole’ Miss powder blue jerseys with the team name and numbers in red.

Then it was time to play ball and the Athletics were ready for that.

“It’s just boys that know how to play ball,” Kurta said. “All 15 guys, they know what they’re doing. They come out, play hard, they have fun. That’s the most important thing with this, these boys are just having a lot of fun. You’re taking time out of your summer, it’s not easy to ask kids to do that.”

This group seems to enjoy it. An opponent canceled one of their games last week and a half-dozen still showed up for a cookout and to play some wiffleball.

“I really missed it a lot,” Betlewski said. “I coached middle school, but it’s nice to be playing again.”

Ironwood hasn’t made many errors, only a half dozen or so in their first 11 games. The pitching has been even better. Gogebic’s CJay Wainio and Hurley’s Devin Soltis are both 3-0 and Betlewski is 2-0. They’ve also gotten good pitching from Ironwood’s Brendan McCullough, Ethan Gallo and Robert Roberts, Gogebic’s Daryk McWilliams and Wakefield-Marenisco graduate Antonio Delfavero.

Soltis has thrown two one-hitters. When Betlewski went down with a hip injury with the bases loaded against Marquette, Soltis stepped in and only gave up an early run.

Kurta has clocked four of their pitchers in the 80s on the radar gun. Wainio hit 82 mph.

“You never expect a kid that’s 5-7, 115 pounds to throw like he does,” Kurta said.

Other teams certainly don’t expect it, he said. They probably should by now. He had Jeffers on the ropes in the district championship game on May 31, only to have to be taken out because he had reached the limit on pitches. The Jets rallied from there.

“His fastball’s not his best pitch, he has one of the best curveballs in the area. He can rely on it, the kid doesn’t get tired and he’s a gamer,” Kurta said.

Soltis and Wainio have also been two of his top hitters. Forrest Movrich of Hurley is also having a good year, he said.

Nobody’s really struggling. Gabe and Cayden Harju from Bessemer aren’t hitting as great as usual, but they’re walking a lot and creatling problems on the basepaths, Kurta said.

“It’s been a good experience, it’s a lot of good baseball,” Kurta said.

Soltis said he’s played baseball with this group on past all-star teams and he enjoys it. McWilliams agreed.

“We’ve known each other for awhile, so it’s fun to play with them,” he said.

Now the Athletics are looking to keep it going this week. They haven’t played any of the teams they’ll match up with in Gladstone. They play Gladstone Thursday at 11 a.m. EDT and Norway at 5 p.m. They get Menominee on Friday at 2. There are four more teams in Escanaba.

The top team from each bracket meets Saturday in Escanaba. The winner of that game advances to the state tournament, which is next week in Marquette.

“I think personally we have a shot at it,” at least to get to Saturday,” Kurta said.

He figures the favorites from Ironwood’s bracket are Gladstone and Norway.

“Gladstone always has phenomenal baseball and Norway’s coming off a state final appearance,” he said. “They’re going to be good. We saw (Norway) in the high school season, they’re going to be good.”

Escanaba, Marquette, Copper Country and Ishpeming are in the other bracket. Copper Country is the best hitting team they’ve seen all year, the Marquette Blues are fundamentally sound, Escanaba is good and Ishpeming is a darkhorse, he said.

“We have, I’d say, the best team in the U.P.,” Betlewski said. “We have a real good chance at winning, definitely.”

Other team members include: Ironwood’s Parker Osterman, Hurley’s Jayden Zaleski, Ironwood’s Delwyn Westeen, Ontonagon’s Dyceson Drew and Ironwood’s Madden Sommer.