WELLMAN

Kyle Mullet just wanted to get the baseball field at Mid-Prairie High School fixed up a bit over the winter.

One conversation led to another conversation, and then another.

It wasn’t long before the silence of the offseason at the ballfield was broken by the sounds of hammering and concrete mixers.

Let’s call it, baseball dads, and moms, in action.

“We spent hours and hours this spring building that thing,” said Mullet, Mid-Prairie’s head baseball coach and a former Golden Hawks player at a time when 20-win seasons and state tournament appearances were common.

That “thing” was a project that produced a new press box and clubhouse facility with private seating for spectators at a raised level behind home plate, a players lounge, a deck leading to the seating area, a new sound system, a new netting stretching from the third base dugout to the first base side, new seating areas behind the netting, new brick-and-mortar work separating the field from the spectator area, and a new infield along with an irrigation system for the outfield.

The project easily topped $200,000, and much of that work and supplies were donated.

A grant of more than $150,000 from the Washington County Riverboat Foundation, a proposal written by baseball dad Jeremy Pickard, certainly helped.

Walk into the ballpark now, and the first thing you might see is the large sponsor board featuring more than 40 financial donors, including 10 at the $10,000-plus level. Included on the big board are Brennaman Pork, Hershberger Enterprises, Hall Masonry, Kalona Sales Barn, Kalona Post & Frame, Slabach Construction, Tyler and Jenna Grout, and the Nick and Laney Pacha and Nathan and Missy Pacha families.

“It’s so great to see these boys have success over the last three years and then show them that the community is behind them,” Mullet said. “That support is huge. That’s everything. We’re trying to build good young men here and I hope the community can see that.”

Clearly, Mid-Prairie’s love for its high school baseball team is easily seen on game night. The field is tucked behind the high school football stadium and located next to rolling farm fields. Golden Hawk fans arrive at games with folding chairs in one arm and blankets in another. They grab their favorite spots on the hill surrounding the ballpark as if they were watching a concert in an amphitheater on a summer’s eve.

When a foul ball heads out of play, kids eagerly chase after it even though the prize is to hand it back to a player so the ball can be shuffled back into play.

The concession stand – featuring some of the biggest porkburgers and hot dogs you’ll see – sits at the top of the hill on the first base side, its grill sending a tempting aroma all around the place.

At the center of all this atmosphere is a high school ball team that is bringing back the memories of a Golden Hawk team that won 54 games in 2009 and 2010; Mullet made the varsity team as a sophomore in 2010 and was a starter in 30 games.

The Golden Hawks won a state championship in 2004 and made it to the state tournament four times in seven years, an impressive run that ended in 2007.

Three years ago, with Andy Greiner as the head coach and Mullet one of his assistants, the Golden Hawks were back in Des Moines for the state tournament after winning River Valley Conference and district championships. It was a big moment.

“It’s back. That was my whole goal,” Mullet said. “I know when Andy came back, asked me to be the assistant coach, that’s what we wanted to bring back to the community.”

Greiner resigned after the 2020 season and Mullet was promoted to the top job. In the last three years, those teams won 53 games, three district titles and made it to the state tournament twice. This year, the Golden Hawks won 11 of their first 13 games and emerged as the top-ranked team in Class 2A.

Mullet and Greiner are neighbors and talk all the time. Certainly, they’re talking baseball.

“This team that we have, especially the seniors that we have, those seniors plus Karson (Grout, a junior who is a University of Iowa verbal recruit), have been on this varsity squad since 2020,” Mullet said. “So, they’ve been to the state tournament twice. I think where this program has gone, it’s not just this year, I feel like the last three or four years, we’ve felt like we’ve had the guys and the mentality that we want to go to the state tournament and do some damage.”

And all that work at the ballfield? It’s just another sign of the baseball beast that is once again growing in Wellman.

“The clubhouse, it’s huge,” Mid-Prairie senior Cain Brown said. “Especially these doubleheaders, being able to go up and kind of chill, get out of the sun and the humidity for a little bit, that’s big.”

“We’re way too spoiled,” Grout said, laughing. “We don’t deserve this stuff.”

It’s all part of a plan. For now, and for later.

“We want to build good guys and hopefully they can be good assets to the community later on,” Mullet said.

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