Kent Stock
The
2007 movie “The Final Season” immortalized the Norway High School baseball
program, and the twenty Iowa state championships won by the school
between 1965 and 1991, in a way that only Hollywood is able. The
film describes the last year of Tiger baseball from the perspective of coach
Kent Stock, a man whose prior Norway coaching experience consisted
of one season as an assistant coach under Jim Van Scoyoc. Just as
Bernie Hutchison had groomed and then selected his young assistant (Van
Scoyoc) to take over the program in1972, Coach Van Scoyoc did the same for
coach Stock at the end of 1990.
As
events played out, it became clear that Kent Stock knew baseball, and how to
coach the sport, and was indeed a fortunate man.
Kent
Stock was born on September 27, 1961, in Ankeny, Iowa. He
was the family’s middle child, sandwiched between older sister Debbie and younger
brother Lee, and from the time he could walk he was carrying, rolling, throwing,
chasing, or just handling a baseball. At age eight he started his
organized baseball experience in Little League under coach Gene Riley and his
father Ken Stock. Continuing through high school under coach Mel
Murken, Stock was an outstanding infielder, but could not convince any Division
I colleges to offer him a scholarship.
Stock
chose his next-best option, a partial scholarship at Waldorf Junior College, at
the time ranked 13th nationally, where he parlayed a .330 batting average
and seven home runs into a spot at Luther College (Division III) in Decorah,
Iowa in 1982.
Due
to personal issues, Stock did not play in 1983, but made up for that by
batting .395 in 1984, and earning selection as All-Conference shortstop. That
year Stock also earned his undergraduate degree in business management
with a minor in education.
After
a year as a graduate assistant baseball coach at Luther, he was hired
as girls-volleyball coach in Belle Plaine. Ironically, soon after
accepting the job, Waldorf offered Stock their head baseball coaching job. Despite
the college’s higher profile, and the chance to coach a sport he truly loved, Kent felt
that he needed to honor his agreement with Belle Plaine, so he remained at
the high school.
In
1989, while scouting a volleyball game between Norway and Mount
Vernon high schools, Stock introduced himself to one of the Norway players’
parents, Jim Van Scoyoc. By this time, Van Scoyoc had won eleven
state titles with the Norway baseball team, yet he was looking for
an assistant for the 1990 season.
Stock
remembered: “As a kid, I always wanted my parents to move to Norway so
I could play Norway baseball. Jim Van Scoyoc was a legend in the
area and to talk with him was like meeting one of my childhood heroes.”
The
two, Van Scoyoc and Stock, established an immediate rapport, and Kent landed
a ‘dream job’ working with the Tigers. The rest is a matter of history,
and cinematic license. Norway won their nineteenth championship
in 1990, and Coach Van Scoyoc departed for the Detroit Tigers organization
soon after.
Following
a roller-coaster 1991 season, and with the full knowledge that the school would
close – thus disbanding the team – Coach Stock’s Tigers won the school’s twentieth
state title on August 3, 1991, with a 7-4 win over South Clay of Gillette Grove.
After
the season, Coach Stock returned to Belle Plaine as head baseball coach. In
1997 he met fellow teacher Laurie Gaddis, and on January 3, 1998, they were
married. The union has produced two children, Kendrie Ann and Kylee
Diane. They were born while Stock worked as a junior high school
assistant principal in the Linn-Marr district. Kent remained
at Belle Plaine High School for seven years before earning
his Masters degree from Drake University in education administration.
In
2003, Stock was offered, and accepted, a position as a school (K-8) principal
in Oak Ridge, and by 2005 he was immersed in helping the production team
develop and film “The Final Season”. Once the film was finished
in 2006, Stock used the diversion to take, well, stock of his life. Deciding
that the job of school principal is a 24/7 proposition, that the students deserved
that level of effort from their principal, and that he did not want to miss
out on the lives of his daughters, he traded on his new fame and took
a job as a relationship manager at Community Savings Bank in Cedar Rapids.
He
has written a book (Heading for Home), been portrayed by celebrated
actor Sean Astin in a movie about the baseball team he coached, led that
team to a state championship in the storied final season of Norway High School,
and found the freedom to be a husband and father to a family he adores. He
has done it all.
Kent Stock was a fine baseball coach, and he is, indeed, a blessed man.