Supporters of NCSD middle school baseball program share concerns

Newton Community School District was told last week by a coach and a former school board member that if it truly wants to develop the proposed middle school baseball program, then it is going to need good coaching, a solid structure and the right amount of resources to remain sustainable and fiscally responsible.

While they seemed apprehensive based on their comments to the school board, Tom Tisdale and Liz Hammerly seemed relatively in support of the initiative so long as it is done right. Tisdale, who has experience coaching Newton baseball, said his main concern is with the development of the program as a whole.

From what he has picked up coaching baseball at Bondurant-Farrar — which he said has “one of the best programs in the state” — the program has to be both purposeful and provide meaningful skills development for student athletes. Tisdale also emphasized the need for a consistent structure starting from the top.

In his eyes, the Newton baseball program is not meeting those standards when it comes to the junior varsity team. Tisdale said the junior varsity team is being “neglected.” He claimed a junior varsity pitcher, for example, only threw 25 pitches in the last two weeks of games.

“If you’re going to put money into a middle school program you better recognize the needs to the JV,” Tisdale said, later claiming the junior varsity team played 14 innings a week in June 2024, compared to the freshmen team’s 36 innings. “The JV football program gets their games. The JV basketball gets their games.”

Tisdale added that Newton can compete with anybody if it puts in the work, but he cautioned that starting a middle school program does not cure the problem.

“Think this thing out and don’t think within yourselves that you can build a great program,” he said. “You have to look outside and see what good programs are.”

As a former school board member, Hammerly is familiar with which questions to ask and where to find the answers and the data that support those answers. But what she is not familiar with is the Newton school district’s activities and athletics and how the department operates or evaluates programs and program needs.

In addition to working as a Heartland AEA special education consultant for the school district, she also has four kids enrolled in a number of sports. She was pleasantly surprised to hear Newton wants to add middle school baseball. But she does not want to see it done in vain.

Hammerly said, “I don’t want it to be a stamp on the state report to say that we’ve added a program to increase participation. I want it done and I want it done well. It only makes sense to be fiscally responsible and efficient with our money in a year where decisions to cut were made based on limited financial resources.”

All school activities are important, she added, but she also wants to know what the justifications were to making this decision, who decided to move it forward and what data was used to support it. She also wanted to know what the season looks like for middle school players. Hammerly also wanted a budget breakdown.

“If we can’t fully fund it then we shouldn’t be doing it,” Hammerly said. “I don’t want a situation like my daughter had. We added middle school softball … There was 35 girls, two coaches and they had a bucket of like 26 balls. You cannot efficiently develop skills and run a successful program with that.”

Hammerly also did not want the district to rob Peter to pay Paul. She questioned in open forum if the district has extra money to fund the program or if others will suffer financially from its addition. She, too, had the same opinion as Tisdale that Newton has the potential to “hang with the big dogs” in Iowa baseball.

“But it’s going to take oversight and accountability,” Hammerly said. “It’s going to take our departments all working together to hire the best folks, ordering the right equipment and reflecting on what does and doesn’t go well so we can make changes.”

To wrap up her comments, Hammerly quoted sports caster and former coach Nick Saban: Mediocre people don’t like high achievers and high achievers don’t like mediocre people.

“Let’s strive to be high achievers,” Hammerly said.