The North Butler baseball team after starting their season at 1-7 bounced back to go .500 at 6-6 in their final 12 games. The Bearcats swept their season series against Nashua-Plainfield, and won single games against Belmond-Klemme, Clarksville, West Fork and Rockford. Head Coach Chase Stohr on the learning curve this season.
“I thought it was a good year. I know the boys and myself wish we would have won a few more games, which we felt like we kind of lost ourselves. Thinking back to the beginning of the season, we had a pretty young team. We had four seniors, but some of them were getting their first varsity action of their careers. There was kind of a learning curve there,” says Stohr. “We had some freshmen and some eighth graders getting lots of varsity playing time. We were really young, so the beginning of the year was definitely an adjustment for a lot of them. As the year progressed, I was very happy with how they learned from everything and just got better over the course of the season.”
Two Bearcats hit over .300 including Brody Wangsness at .393 and Wrigley Endelman at .333. Endelman led the team with 15 RBIs. As a team the Bearcats had a .243 avg, which was a major improvement from a .198 avg in 2024. Stohr on what’s needed for the team to continue to make strides.
“One of the big things is going to be, continuing to get better at the plate and hitting. You can have bad nights in the field or pitching if you’re able to score runs, but it’s pretty hard to have bad nights pitching when you can’t score runs. We definitely need be able to apply pressure offensively and be able to score runs. That really only happens consistently if you hit the ball consistently. I definitely want to see us continue that improvement there. Beyond that, I just want to see the boys grow and get more experience. I know some of the boys were talking about playing some fall ball, spring ball and doing whatever they can to get more of a baseball experience.”
Four Bearcats were recognized as Top of Iowa East all-conference honorees including Brody Wangsness, Wade Wangsness, Wrigley Endelman and Nolan Reser.
North Butler after graduating Reser, Alex Almelien, Henry Endelman and Chris Witte are projected to return 15 players next year.
