Photo by Lynda Downs

The 2024 Norwalk baseball team finished the season with a 13-19 overall record and placed fourth in the Little Hawkeye Conference with a mark of 10-8. The Warriors were competitive on most nights, playing some of their best baseball against highly-ranked opponents. They lost nine games by two runs or less, including an 8-inning loss to Ottumwa in the first round of Class 4A Substate play last Friday night.

Through it all, 10 Norwalk seniors stuck with the program to the very end. Several of those players were key contributors and multi-year starters for Coach Chad Wiedmann. Others saw very limited playing time. But on Senior Night July 9 vs. ADM, the entire senior class started the game and played throughout. The Warriors lost 12-0, but Wiedmann would start the same 10 players again if he had the chance.

“I tell the players… that I don’t give a rip how good of a baseball player they are until I know how good of a person they are,” he said. “We had some guys on the bench that hadn’t seen a whole lot of playing time, and I kind of had a chance to reflect over the last couple weeks about what it’s really all about and just decided that it means a lot to me for those seniors to stick it out, and the commitment and the dedication that they have. They all knew what it was going to be like this summer and they accepted their role and are just amazing young men.”

The Warriors batted .242 as a team this summer and finished with a team ERA of 3.21. Sixty-four unearned runs proved costly as untimely errors – 85 in all – prevented Norwalk from achieving a winning record.

Senior CJ Davis led the team with a .301 batting average and was also one of the top pitchers with a 4-4 record, one save and 2.10 earned run average. Junior Cole Wardlow and senior Aidan Harder combined for another six wins and three saves. The remainder of the senior class included Caleb Ochanpaugh, Payton Nichols, Mason Vogel, Dawson King, Josh Pins, Holdyn Havick, Jake Ferguson and Ben Peterson.