AURORA- The North Woods baseball team has a new skipper at the helm this season, but he’s certainly no stranger to Grizzlies’ hardball.
R.J. Kruse served as an assistant for six years under former Head Coach Jeff Smerud, helping to build a winning culture for North Woods baseball, and his experience coaching some of his players goes back even farther, as one of them team’s ace pitchers is his son, Ben.
Kruse got to take his new squad for a spin last week against Chisholm on the synthetic turf field at Mesabi East, the first time the Grizzlies have ventured outside since practices began.
Ben Kruse took the mound for the Grizzlies and looked sharp in his first outing, registering nine strikeouts and allowing the Bluestreaks just two runs.
But the Grizzlies had troubles of their own at the plate, collecting only two hits in the game.
Trajan Barto was the only North Woods player to score, reaching base on a walk and scoring on a sacrifice by Kruse in the 2-1 loss.
“We’ve been inside for five weeks and we can’t complain about the way we played today,” Coach Kruse said. “Our batting cage has issues and we hadn’t even batted against live pitching yet – this was the first time. I thought we did pretty well.”
Coach Kruse is going to depend on player Kruse for leadership this year as the team’s sole senior, but he’ll also be able to call on some returning veteran underclassmen like Alex Burckhardt, Louie Panichi, and Talen Jarshaw.
With a very young team, Kruse is prepared for the growing pains that will come with it.
“Hopefully we’re going to scratch out some good wins this year with this young club and have a successful season,” he said.
The team is likely to miss out on a few upcoming scheduled games due to soggy and possibly snowy home field conditions.