The Aplington-Parkersburg and Iowa Falls-Alden baseball teams will meet for a game next summer at the Field of Dreams. AP Coach Brett Kleespies says it’s an opportunity a long time in the making.
“It’s one of those opportunities we’ve been trying to get for our guys to play at a bigger venue, and something that they’ll have core memories of,” Kleespies says. “I remember playing in high school, we played in the Metrodome and played at Principal Park. It’s still one of those things 25 years later you talk about with your buddies at reunions or whatever. So excited for the boys to have the opportunity. It’s just the nostalgia around the Field of Dreams and what it means. I was kind of pondering how many boys have actually seen the Field of Dreams movie. So we might have a coaches party at my house to sit down and watch the Field of Dreams with the boys just to get their heads around what it means and just the opportunity they get to have there.”
IFA Coach Wyatt Ziesman shares what he hopes his team will take away from the experience.
“There’s some very good quotes out of that movie, the love of baseball, and it’s a sport that once you’re involved in baseball and the older you get, the more you fall in love with it,” Ziesman says. “And it seems like it’s one of those things you can do forever, playing catch with your son or daughter or something like that, playing catch with them and just having that kind of American dream of being out in the yard wit the family and playing catch and whatever it might be that you take away from the movie. Hoping our team can take a look at that and just get a good feel and love for baseball from the historical part of it, playing at such a big venue like the Field of Dreams.”
It’ll be Tuesday, June 23 at 7:00 p.m. The game will be among a growing trend of high school games being played at the movie site, which took off after the first MLB game at the site in 2021.
