When it comes to having enough pitching depth, Falls’ Junior League baseball team this summer could be described as having “an embarrassment of riches.”
Of the 15 players on the 2011 roster, 10 are listed as a pitcher as one of their positions.
Jay Bartkowski, who is in his first year as the Junior League head coach, said he is concerned about “having enough innings for all our skilled pitchers to pitch.”
Bartkowski, who coached the same group of players in the Little League two years ago when they were ages 11-12, was an assistant coach of Eric Walls last season on Falls’ VFW baseball team. Tim Mellstrom, who coached the Junior League last year, is back this summer as an assistant with Dieter Humbert also being an assistant coach.
Based on age, the Junior League team consists mostly of seventh- and eighth-graders from this past school year. Five this spring were part of the varsity baseball rosters at either International Falls or Littlefork-Big Falls.
Of those five, the three Broncos — Jack Mellstrom, Wyatt Ulrich and Jackson Vollom — have already seen time on the mound this summer.
The two Viking players — both of whom are listed as being able to pitch — include Rylan Henrickson, who started at catcher for L-BF, and Evan Wimmer.
A number of the Junior League players, who have been practicing this summer with Falls’ older VFW baseball players, have also been seeing action in VFW games.
Bartkowski said he looks forward to the opportunity of “having this group (ages 13 and 14) work with the VFW baseball group (ages 15 and 16) to use this experience of our older players to teach our younger players the game.”
Mellstrom, Ulrich and Vollom, along with Cole Miggins and Ben Humbert, are all available Junior League pitchers who have also seen playing time this summer on the VFW team.
In addition to the pitching depth, Bartkowski said the Junior League has a “high level of experience due to (a) prior state tournament appearance as 11-year-olds with the 14-year-olds of this group.”
Given a number of players able to play multiple positions, including pitcher and catcher, Bartkowski said he hopes to be able to find “the right balance of challenging players to learn new positions and become more versatile versus familiarity and consistency at one spot.”
Once tournament time arrives around the middle of next month, he said he believes hosting the District Tournament will provide the Falls “home field advantage and home fan advantage.”
As for the teams to watch out for this summer, Bartkowski said “Grand Rapids (Itasca) is typically a baseball favorite while Hibbing, Greenway, Deer River and Ely are very competitive.”
