Banker’s baseball team inspired feature film

Kent Stock went to work at Community Savings Bank of Edgewood, Iowa, in August. The former school principal and freshly minted financial relationship manager joined the banking industry just in time for a fall and winter of financial unrest. .But this is not Stock's first brush with fateful timing. In 1990, Stock sought an assistant coach's job with the Norway Tigers, the nearly mythic high school baseball team memorialized in the 2007 feature film The Final Season..Stock wound up presiding over that season. He described it and the film at the annual Iowa Breakfast, hosted by the Iowa Bankers Association during the ABA's national ag bankers' conference (see page 10). .The movie's title refers to the 1991 disbanding of the Norway baseball team as the town's tiny high school prepared to merge into the larger Benton Community School District..Norway is a town of some 600 people about 20 miles southwest of Cedar Rapids. It is the birthplace of major league ballplayers Hal Trosky and Mike Boddicker. Its commitment to and influence on baseball were outsized..Norway teams won state championships from 1965 to 1970, according to the Des Moines Register, before local legend Jim Van Scoyoc became coach and led the team to another 12 state titles between 1972 and 1990..Stock met Van Scoyoc at a Norway volleyball game in 1990. Van Scoyoc was in the bleachers and Stock sat nearby..Stock had dreamed of being a pro baseball player, had even been an all-conference shortstop at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. But he didn't get drafted by a baseball franchise, so he got on with a career in teaching and coaching for a school in Belle Plaine, Iowa. His first coaching opportunity was in girls' volleyball, an assignment he accepted with some reluctance since volleyball isn't baseball..Stock's team was scheduled to play the winner of the Norway volleyball match up. He went to scout the teams, but found himself inching closer to Van Scoyoc..That night Stock discovered that Norway's volleyball team was every bit as sharp as its baseball team. But the young coach left with more than a useful scouting report. He left having made an introduction to Van Scoyoc, who invited Stock to apply for an open assistant coaching position with the Norway Tigers..Two nights later Norway shut out Stock's volleyball team. But Van Scoyoc and Stock soon met in the Belle Plaine Pizza Hut for what Stock described as a three-hour interview. "There's no college class, there's no high school class that would ever teach you how to be in an interview like this," Stock said. Van Scoyoc "talked for two hours and 45 minutes," then offered Stock the job. During Stock's first year, the Norway Tigers took their 19th state title..In 1991, Van Scoyoc became a pitching coach in the Detroit Tigers' minor league system. Norway's final season began, ended and went down in movie history with Stock as the head coach. He led the team to one last state championship before the school closed..Iowa filmmaker Tony Wilson read a newspaper headline proclaiming Norway's "tinsel town ending" and called Stock to express interest in his story. "I thought he was just playing a joke on me. I thought it was some of my buddies from Belle Plaine playing tricks," Stock said..After several years of development and scripting, the film was shot on location in Norway, on the carefully restored field where the Tigers once played. "It was definitely a time for the town of Norway and surrounding communities; they came out and were extras in the movie," Stock said..Sean Astin played Stock. He and his family brunched at Stock's home and then joined the Stock family on an outing to the public pool. Powers Boothe plays Van Scoyoc..After the movie and a long run in education administration, Stock decided to find a career with more predictable hours. He wanted to spend more time with his daughters, ages 8 and 10; hence his new role at Community Savings Bank.."As a middle school principal I was out a lot of evenings; I spent 23 years of my life helping raise other people's kids. It was time for me to focus on my own daughters and be a mainstay in their lives," Stock said..During filming someone asked Stock whether he wished he had sons, so he could carry on coaching baseball. Reflecting on the conversation at the Iowa Breakfast he said: "Baseball is my love. My daughters love piano and dance. It's my hope that they will follow their love and it will take them great places."