The 2002 Shawano American Legion Post 117 baseball team went 33-10 on its way to a state title. The 2003 team was 32-6 in a repeat run a year later.
Now, 10 years later, players from that team are getting together to reminisce about their dominant performance — and play a little baseball.
During a practice Friday, organized by the team’s former coach Jim Kamke to prepare for squaring off against the current Shawano Legion team today at Memorial Park, there was more than a little competitive fire to go along with the nostalgia.
“Not that we’re necessarily overconfident, but we have a lot of good talent here,” Ace pitcher Michael Rickert said. “So I like our chances.”
Kamke, who still umpires baseball games including a few Shawano Legion games the last few weeks, agreed.
“I’ve been giving them (the current Shawano Legion team) a rough time about how bad we’re going to beat them. I don’t know. I think we’ll be pretty competitive yet,” he said. “Our pitching staff is going to be pretty good.”
Both Rickert and Levi O’Kimosh will be back on the mound for Shawano. The two were dominant during the championship season. O’Kimosh was 17-1 in the two seasons. Rickert was a perfect 10-0 and struck out 94 batters in 2002. He was 10-0 and struck out 120 in 2003.
“I think we had probably the strongest pitching staff in the state at that time, even of AAA,” Kamke said. “We beat a few AAA clubs that year including the state champion.”
The success of the team went beyond the pitching.
“We hit the ball. We had good fundamentals,” Kamke said. “We didn’t make a whole lot of mistakes. That was one of the things that really helped us.”
Perhaps the most important factor was the team enjoyed playing together.
“Everyone talks about the talent and skill, we definitely had that, but the extra ingredient that we had was the team chemistry,” Glenn Preston said.
That chemistry was evident on the practice field Friday, as the team gathered for the first time in 10 years.
“Basically, it’s kind of a weird feeling. You see some of these guys, who you haven’t seen for 10 years since we won it, the faces bring back so many memories,” Rickert said. “We’re just jumping right back into the big old family we used to be a part of.”
The team won its first state championship in 2002 with a 6-3 win over Merrill. The next year the team capped the season with a 5-0 shutout of Seymour.
“Playing in ‘03, in the championship, that was just a blast,” Preston said. “That was one of the best experiences of my life. It wasn’t so much the championship that we won, it was awesome that we won the championship, but the thing I remember most about it was the group of guys and how close we were. To be with a group of guys that we were like brothers with made it extra special.”
Kamke says he knew it would be important to hold the reunion 10 years ago.
“I told them at that time, they don’t understand what they did, but they will,” Kamke said at Friday’s practice. “Once we get to the reunions, then you’ll understand what this means. And this is just what is happening tonight. Just to see the smiles on their faces when they come in to see each other. It’s awesome. That’s what you play the game for.”
Kamke has gathered memorabilia and collected photos from the era, something he said was easy because the team had such great support.
“It was not only the players or the coaching staff, we had some awesome parents and some awesome fans,” Kamke said. “They took pictures, they just did everything. We’ll have a lot of stuff set up in the clubhouse and everyone can go take a look.”
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