Casey Bryant joins IHSBCA Hall of Fame

EPWORTH — The Field of Dreams movie site is only about 10 miles northwest of Casey Bryant’s own field of dreams.

For the past quarter century, the Creston native has built a perennial state baseball power at Western Dubuque, a school that had gone through a 32-year drought from its last state tournament appearance when Bryant became head coach in 2000.

Since then, the Bobcats have won more than 600 games including seven trips to the state tournament and back-to-back state championships in 2022 and 2023. Their run for a three-peat ended in a substate final loss to Center Point-Urbana last summer.

Bryant, named Creston’s Outstanding Male Athlete in 1986, will be inducted later this month into the Iowa High School Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Fame. The awards banquet will be held at 6 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 18 at the Sheraton Hotel in West Des Moines.

Westphal at clinic

It is part of the annual two-day clinic for baseball coaches to be held at the Sheraton. Among the featured speakers is Ethan Westphal, former minor league pitcher and standout at Lenox, Martensdale-St. Marys (state champion), Southwestern Community College and Central Missouri. He is now the pitching coach at Southern Illinois-Edwardsville. His father, Steve Westphal, is the former longtime coach at Lenox, including the 2006 state championship, and is also a member of the IHSBCA Hall of Fame.

Also among the Hall of Fame inductees this year is the late Merl Eberly, longtime coach and general manager of the Clarinda A’s summer collegiate baseball program that has produced major league players such as Ozzie Smith and Von Hayes.

Bryant joins several other IHSBCA Hall of Fame inductees with Creston ties. They include longtime coach and umpire Ron “Fox” Clinton, former SWCC and national team coach Bill Krejci, former Creston coach Vic Belger and his son Scott, an all-stater for the Panthers who coached two state championships at Southeast Polk as well as coaching former major league pitcher Jeremy Hellickson at Des Moines Hoover. Creston teacher and coach Steve Shantz of Greenfield is also in the Hall of Fame as an umpire.

Bryant, now 56, was one of Creston’s best all-around athletes in history as a pitcher and shortstop in baseball and point guard in basketball for coach Vic Belger. He was also the quarterback of Creston’s first football playoff team for coach Dick Bergstrom. Bryant earned all-state baseball honors as a senior and played in the 1986 All-Star Series for the Small School West Team.

Bryant went on to play collegiately at the University of Dubuque for three years, where he set the record for strikeouts in one game as a pitcher with 15 until that record was broken last year. He finished with one year as a player at Mount Mercy College in Cedar Rapids, where he earned all-region honors.

He began his teaching and coaching career in the fall of 1991 at Dubuque Wahlert, coaching freshman baseball for Hall of Fame coach Ed Feyen. He moved on to Western Dubuque, where he served as freshman coach and assistant varsity coach his first two years before becoming head coach in 2000.

Under Bryant, Western Dubuque has a combined record of 625-339 as a 3A school playing against mostly 4A competition as a member the Mississippi Valley Conference. He has been named District Coach of the Year three times and State Coach of the Year twice. He has coached in four All-Star Series.

Bryant founded the Western Dubuque Youth Baseball Club for players in 7U through 13U age groups. That club will have 12 youth teams playing in tournaments this spring and summer. He has been honored by the Telegraph Herald newspaper in Dubuque as Coach of the Year seven times.

Bryant and his wife Jennifer are the parents of three sons, Ben, Nick and Drew. Ben set records as a punt and kick returner at Wartburg College where he ended his football career last fall; Nick is a basketball player at Clarke University in Dubuque and Drew will be a senior member of Western Dubuque’s baseball team this summer. Casey has coached all three of his sons in the Bobcat baseball program.

Back-to-back titles

Western Dubuque won back-to-back state titles in 2022 and 2023 and Nick was the shortstop on the first championship squad.

Bryant said he was influenced early in his baseball life by coaches Tom Barnes, Vic Belger and Bill Krejci, and later by a number of Hall of Fame coaches in the Dubuque area as he was starting his coaching career.

“I begged, borrowed and stole ideas from some great coaches,” Bryant said. “In building a program, I think you have to prove to your community that you’re in it for the long haul and you’re there to build it up. It takes time. A big key for us was when us coaches got together and implemented a strength and conditioning program during our school day about eight to 10 years ago. It doesn’t take time out of practice to lift and isn’t ‘something else’ they have to fit in outside of their school day.”

(A similar program was launched at Creston High School this school year.)

Bryant said the high school baseball field in nearby Farley is also a plus, as well as a solid feeder program with the development of the Western Dubuque Youth Baseball Club.

“Having a great facility and taking pride in it is important. The kids grow up wanting to play there,” Bryant said. “We have an incredible field that rivals some of the best in the state. Also, having a great feeder program in our baseball club has allowed kids to get a lot of experience. It’s a nonprofit organization with sponsors and donors so most kids don’t pay more than $200 a year and that includes uniforms. We have scholarships available for low-income families that want their kid to have that opportunity. Jennifer has been on the board and has helped our high school program out as well.”

Team trademarks

Playing against larger schools most of the regular season, Bryant’s teams prepare diligently early in the preseason to hit against high-velocity pitchers. His Bobcat teams traditionally have strong hitters in spots one through nine in the lineup, putting pressure on opposing defenses with an aggressive style on the bases. Like the Belger teams he played on in Creston, solid defense is a trademark of Western Dubuque teams.

Among the alumni of the program are Calvin Harris, who now plays in the Chicago White Sox minor league system; and Isaac Then of the two state championship teams, named Iowa Player of the Year in 2023 by the Des Moines Register. He was the winning pitcher in both title games. He went on to play for the University of Wisconsin-Platteville.

Bryant, also a high school counselor at Western Dubuque, has no plans to retire soon. Even when he does retire, he will likely find a way to stay involved in the program in some capacity.

“My father (Robert) instilled it in me at 5 or 6 years old when he coached Little League,” Bryant said. “I’ve been around baseball fields my whole life. I played 18 years of semipro up here (Dubuque area) after college. I wouldn’t know what to do if I wasn’t involved in baseball somehow.”

All these years later, after the seeds of that passion were sewn on the baseball fields in Creston, Casey Bryant will be known as a Hall of Famer.