SOMMERFELDT: Westby influence delivers state title for Marathon
By TODD SOMMERFELDT / La Crosse Tribune
GRAND CHUTE, Wis. — Steve Warren still considers himself a Westby Norseman at heart.
It’s what he learned as a football and baseball player in his hometown that made him the coach he is today.
What Warren is today is the coach of the WIAA Division 3 state baseball champion.
Warren, a 1985 Westby graduate, coached Marathon past Aquinas 3-2 in the title game, which began Thursday and ended Friday at Fox Cities Stadium.
His team won that game, he said, because of men like Ken Trott, Art Brunje, Neil Hoven and John Blihovde.
“The things I learned from them are things that I’ve applied to every team I’ve ever coached,” said Warren, who was coached by Trott in baseball from the time he played Little League until the time he left Westby for UW-La Crosse. “The basics about pitching a defense and really how to compete, I learned from Ken Trott.”
Warren arrived in Marathon as a math teacher and baseball coach in the fall of 1998, and what he found in terms of baseball when he got there wasn’t all that impressive.
Track and field, he said, was the emphasized spring sport.
His first team went 5-12, and Warren said that kind of performance satisfied the community.
“I was thinking, ‘What have I done?’” Warren said. “I tried to leave several times.”
But things started to turn around five years ago when Warren saw something he liked in a group of seventh-graders. He decided to stick it out and see what would happen with the first group of kids he thought truly enjoyed the sport.
“They kept getting better and better, and they bought into my system,” Warren said. “It was discipline, hard work and sacrifice, which I learned at Westby in football and baseball.”
The transition, he said, was an easy one from that point on, He said it helped to see some similarities between the makeup of the roster that he is coaching and the one he played on in high school.
“In Westby, we were known as farm boys who went out there and battled,” Warren said with a laugh. “I lot of these kids are farm boys, too.”
Warren said the influence of Trott, Brunje, Hoven and Blihovde is what landed him a career in teaching and coaching.
“They had an effect on me that I wanted to have on other kids,” he said. “Ken taught us the right way to play baseball, and the other three did the same in football.”
After graduating from and playing baseball with Aquinas coach Scott Bagniefski at UW-L, Warren took a teaching job at Milwaukee Thomas More. He later went to Monroe for a year before making the move to Marathon.
He played first base at UW-L.
“Scott was an outstanding shortstop,” Warren said, “and I was a very average first baseman.”
Warren had two close calls with state while competing at Westby. The Norsemen advanced to the sectional finals in football when he was a senior. They also made it to the state semifinals in baseball.
On Friday, Warren has his time in the spotlight, and he made the most of it … thanks to some important people from his hometown.
