Finally Awesome: BP baseball team is having a breakthrough season

Published 7:08 pm Friday, May 11, 2018

BLOOMING PRAIRIE — It’s been a long time coming for the Blooming Prairie baseball team.

After nearly a decade struggles on the baseball diamond, the Awesome Blossoms have finally broke through this season. BP has won seven of its first nine games after compiling just seven wins in the previous two seasons combined.

“We’ve been waiting for this team for a long time. This group has stuck with it and we always said the results would come,” said BP head coach Matt Kittelson, who is in his fourth year in command. “We’ve been young [the last few years] and a lot of them played as eighth and ninth graders. They always had the phsyical tools, but they didn’t have the mental side of it down. Now they have the experience and they don’t fold in big situations.”

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BP has a strong reputation as a football school and plenty of the school’s baseball players were on the football team that played in the Section 1A title game this past fall. Seth Peterson, a junior, was the quarterback of the team and now he’s finally finding his groove in baseball, where he has been on the varsity team since he was an eighth grader.

“Playing quarterback is really fun, but it’s less stressful to play baseball,” Peterson said. “Big innings hurt us in the past, but this year we’ve been getting the big innings.”

Blooming Prairie’s Payton Simon throws in practice for the Awesome Blossoms. Rocky Hulne/sports@austindailyherald.com

BP has some strong wrestlers on the baseball team as state qualifiers Ethan Arett, Mitchell Oswald and Dylan Nirk are on the team. Lucas Noble, who played in the state golf meet in the past two years, has also come back to baseball this spring.

“They’ve been successful in football, basketball and wrestling,” Kittelson said. “They’re winners. They’re good athletes and they know how to win, they just didn’t know how to win in baseball in year’s past.”

Payton Simon, a junior who was on the football team this past fall and the wrestling team in the winter, said he’s always been drawn to sports for big moments. He’s hoping the BP baseball team can produce some big moments of their own this season.

The last time BP won a playoff game was in 2009 when a 20-win Blossom team advanced all the way to the Section 1A tournament.

Simon and the Blossoms would love to have a postseason like that this spring.

“You’re adrenaline is always pumping and you always want to be there in big moments and make big plays,” Simon said. “I really think the chemistry has brought us together. We had all the components, we just never have bonded like we did this year. We’ve got pitching, fielding and we’re finally hitting and putting it all together.”

Kittelson said one of the players to mature the most this season is Nirk, who went from a catcher who struggled making throws last season, to a catcher who has thrown out about 75 percent of runners attempting to steal on BP.

Nirk said he’s always had joy of playing baseball.

“We’re passionate about it, but maybe the fans not so much. We’re starting to bring them on now,” Nirk said. “I’m doing this for the team and I just wanted to get better. Throwing hard down to second base is always key. I’m just having fun out there. We’ve just got to keep getting better every day.”

After years of being a playoff underdog, the Blossoms are hoping to make a push at being a top-seed in the Section 1A West Division tournament, which begins May 23. BP has five games remaining in the regular season and it will play at Glenville-Emmons/Alden-Conger on 10 a.m. Saturday.