Todd Sommerfeldt: Central's Van Egtern keeps eyes on the big prize

By Todd Sommerfeldt | La Crosse Tribune

Kent Van Egtern didn’t really know what kind of reaction to expect with his first bold statement, but he made it anyway.

“It was a parents meeting,” said Van Egtern, Central High School first-year baseball coach. “When I said it, the kids and parents all looked at me with their mouths open.”

With their jaws on the floor, they wondered if their school really had found the right guy to replace Gregg Erickson. Was this guy, a Coulee Region outsider taking over one of the state’s most successful baseball programs after serving as an assistant at Waupun, going to work out?

“They were like, ‘Do you know what you’re getting into?” he said. “I did, to a point.”

At that meeting, Van Egtern told his players and their parents that winning city games and conference championships weren’t his priority.

He wasn’t about to base the success of his first season or any other on a city title.

He didn’t want to coach the best regular-season team in La Crosse. He wanted to coach a team that had a chance to win a state title.

City games have always been king in La Crosse, and Van Egtern was about to butt heads with generations of people who held that belief.

“What would you rather do?” he asked. “Most kids would rather finish their season in Appleton.”

The Red Raiders (14-9) didn’t win a city game during the regular season this year. They finished third — behind Logan and Aquinas — in the MVC.

But they are preparing to play Beaver Dam (16-7) in a WIAA Division 1 state quarterfinal game at Fox Cities Stadium in Grand Chute, Wis., this morning.



That’s just what Van Egtern wanted. He wanted his team playing its best baseball at the end of the season, not at the beginning or in the middle of it.

Van Egtern’s personality fits his team. He’s a no-nonsense guy when something is on the line, but he isn’t beyond having his fun.

“You never know what to expect from him,” senior left fielder John Munson said of his coach. “One minute he’s laughing, and the next he’s just screaming at you.

“But he cares. That’s what we need.”

Van Egtern cared enough about taking this job that he moved his wife and two children here without full-time work lined up.

The caliber of the program, which has made 17 previous appearances in the state tournament, isn’t lost on him.

He put together a very specific plan to get Central in the state tournament again after it missed the last eight.

It meant starting over at square one with fundamentals. With a new coach in town, no one had a starting position sewn up. Playing time was only going to be earned with hard work.

Van Egtern liked what he saw during some scrimmage time against his old team at Waupun.

That, he said, planted the seed for his expectations in his first spring at Central.

“We played pretty well, I thought. If we can get a few breaks and some pitching, we’ll be OK,” Van Egtern said. “That’s what turned out happening.”

The Red Raiders had their ups and downs, but they’ve been able to accomplish Van Egtern’s No. 1 goal of playing their best when it counted most.

“We can be a good team, and we can be a bad team,” Munson said. “We’ve found that out.”

The Red Raiders have also found out that when they are good, they’re among the best teams in the state.

Todd Sommerfeldt can be reached at (608) 791-8208 or todd.sommerfeldt@lee.net