With a roster of mostly underclassmen, the Iowa Falls-Alden baseball team displayed notable development throughout a season where they posted their first winning record since 2013. Head Coach Wyatt Ziesman says the pitching rotation, each of whom was a returning starter from last year, was challenged to improve their command while increasing velocity.
“We knew there’d be some growing pains, but one thing we focused on is with the increase in velocity that they’ve had this last year, finding command with it,” Ziesman says. “And they did a good job this year, especially Raine Pitre of the command with his increase in velocity. And he showed up really well for us this year on the mound. Hayden Reed did a good job on the mound for us. He throws hard. He’s a young guy. Brody McNeal, and then we just scattered on down from there. And then we also throw in Ryder Pitre, who’s great on the mound has great command and a lot of different off speed. Just good presence on the mound from those young guys. They did a good job for us, and it’s something to look forward to for sure, the next couple years having them on the rotation.”
The staff posted an ERA of 3.19, led by sophomore Raine Pitre’s 1.17 with a team-leading 73 strikeouts. Ryder Pitre posted a 1.95 ERA in his nine appearances. Both Pitres were named to the North Central Conference all-conference second team.
Offensively, the team made a vast improvement from a .184 batting average in 2024 to .255.
“We tried to look at how we approach our at-bats this year and challenge ourselves to get better each at-bat and throughout the game. We start out the game and everybody gets their first at-bat. How can we get better our second at-bat? Kind of take that mentality. And so you put that in there with those guys getting a year older, a year stronger, a year more experienced at the plate, and that really helped raise our batting average. We talked about keeping that going for next year and trying to get it up. We’re going to challenge them to continue to bring the team average up like they did this year.”
The team went 12-11 and 7-7 in conference play, and won seven of their final 10 games.
Wyatt Ziesman interview:
