Hoeppner and Hawks will be back

By Paul D. Bowker
Posted 7/14/21

A memorable season had just ended with a 10-1 loss to West Liberty, the ninth-ranked team in Class 3A.

Smiling faces turned into tears and then into smiling faces again. Not just among the …

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Hoeppner and Hawks will be back

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A memorable season had just ended with a 10-1 loss to West Liberty, the ninth-ranked team in Class 3A.

Smiling faces turned into tears and then into smiling faces again. Not just among the players, but among the parents. And, yes, the coaches.

This was, after all, a building-block season for Mid-Prairie’s softball team.

Ten wins? That’s a significant building block for a team that hadn’t won more than nine games in any of the previous three seasons.

After the usual postgame huddle on July 6 at West Liberty, as parents were folding up their chairs for the last time this summer, a young player ran up to head coach Matt Hoeppner and asked him innocently: “Will I ever see you again?”

“Of course,” came the quick hearty response.

This was just the beginning of a bright future for Mid-Prairie softball, Hoeppner says. The Golden Hawks scored their first doubleheader sweep in two years. They did it twice. The 28 runs they scored in a doubleheader against Holy Trinity on June 23 were the most scored in two games since 2014.

The achievements were special, especially for a team that had just one senior – Myah Lugar – and two eighth-graders in its starting lineup.

“Honestly, it means everything,” Hoeppner said.

But to understand where this team came from and where it is going, you have to go back to the beginning of the preseason. Hoeppner, the girls basketball head coach at West Liberty, was yet another new softball coach at Mid-Prairie. The Golden Hawks won just once in an abbreviated regular season last year, then won a postseason game at Tipton.

“I walked in day one … and here comes this guy asking us to work hard,” Hoeppner said.

The questions were already rattling through the coach’s head. And how would he answer them?

“Why? We’re not very good, we haven’t been very good. Why do anything that we haven’t been doing recently?”

Instead of hearing those piercing questions, the opposite happened. When do we start? Let’s go. 

early, they work late,” Hoeppner said. “They’re always asking for things to be open down there.”

Open gyms and training sessions became popular. Players bonded with their new coach and with each other. The coach bonded with his athletes. They needed each other.

“I’d like to think it was a little bit of both,” Hoeppner said. “When I came in and I told them this is what I’m about, and this is what we’re hopefully going to stand for as a program going forward, they immediately bought into that. I mean, it’s a collective deal.”

Soon, Golden Hawk players were chanting and shouting from their dugout even when trailing a highly ranked team by eight or nine runs. They swept doubleheader wins against Holy Trinity and Tipton. They scored 11 runs in their first win against Camanche. They played in highly regarded weekend tournaments at the University of Iowa and Linn-Mar High School. They took on a schedule that called for eight or nine games a week, and 40 over a seven-week season.

And they were having a blast.

“To be able to influence kids, to be able to want to be better, and to have fun doing it, means the world to me,” Hoeppner said. “That’s why I do this. That’s why I coach. It’s not about the money. It’s about helping kids and watching kids succeed and that look on their face when they accomplish something they didn’t even know they could accomplish, but the whole time you did. That’s what it’s about for me.”

And, yes, he hopes to return for more fun in 2022.

This was just the start.

“That’s my plan,” Hoeppner said.

 

Paul Bowker can be reached at bowkerpaul1@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter: @bowkerpaul.