Jim Van Scoyoc coached the legendary Norway High School baseball team to 12 state titles from 1972 to 1990 and was a key player in the bitter, unsuccessful battle to prevent the school from closing after the 1991 academic year – a story chronicled in the 2007 movie The Final Season.

But in the town that baseball made famous, he keeps a low profile. “I’m just Jim,” he says. “I’m not a people person at all. I enjoy just being in my garden or alone with my wife.”

Still, his love of the game and the kids runs deep and, 20 years later, he’s back on the field, coaching a Norway Pony League team that includes three of his grandsons. “It’s a humbling experience,” says the always-intense coach. “I’m enjoying it, but it’s been a difficult transition back to the youth level, which is where I started a long time ago with Peewee teams.”

He’s coaching fifth through eighth graders, he explains, “because nobody signed up to coach Pony League or Little League, and it seemed kind of strange to me that a town with Norway’s baseball history had no one to coach.”

Van Scoyoc’s mild frustration hints at a broader dismay with the state of the sport he played and coached for more than 50 years.

“It’s not very good,” he says of the future of Iowa high school baseball. “You might consider me an old-timer now and we always tell you how great it used to be.”

Making baseball a summer sport has weakened it, according to Van Scoyoc. “Most everybody plays travel ball in the summer, and the athletic association looks at summer as being a downtime where you can work with kids on other sports – weight training for football or skills training for basketball.

As a result, practice time for baseball is limited, especially if there are rainouts. “I’m kind of jaded, because I’ve always been one who enjoys practices more than games,” he says. “You don’t learn in a game except by making mistakes. As far as applying principles, you need practices to teach them.

“I’ve never been a supporter of summer (high school) baseball,” he adds. “It should be spring, although the absolute best time is fall, but you’re never going to compete against football. And I’m not a big proponent of travel baseball either. A lot of the coaching is just a father making sure his kid gets a hit. It’s not a semi-pro doing it for the love of the game and love for the kids and how well they progress.”

His candor occasionally offends people, he admits, but he’s content to play the role of crusty old-schooler.

“Kids don’t really get to be kids anymore,” he laments. “The days of getting on your bicycle, grabbing your bat or your basketball, and going to play ball or shoot hoops until your mom calls you for dinner (are gone). In this town that’s the way it was. Kids don’t get to do that anymore, and I’m not sure if they would. Everybody is chasing the dollar today.”

Sweet and painful memories

Winning state tournaments was fun, says Van Scoyoc. “It was a unique situation – the right time and place, the right players and parents and attitudes. Without that I probably would have fallen right on my face like everyone else.”

But asked to name the high and low points of his career, he doesn’t mention wins and losses – or even the closing of a beloved rural school.

“The thing that makes me the happiest is when I see something that somebody is doing wrong and I can get them confident in doing what I’m trying to tell them and they plug it in during a game and it works, and I see them smile. I can’t tell you how exciting that is. It still gives me goose bumps.”

The lows are equally vivid. “I really get torn up when kids get into substance abuse,” he says. “I look at things from a pragmatic point of view, and I know kids will try things, but if they make a mistake, dues have to be paid. Kids have to make up their mind whether they want to be part of the program. I have no tolerance at all. If you get caught, you’re done. It’s as simple as that. But I have never been able to figure out why they do it.”

A standout high school pitcher, Van Scoyoc played baseball and basketball at William Penn University, where he was all conference in both sports and was voted the Iowa Intercollegiate Athletic Conference baseball MVP his senior year. He passed up what he figured was a long shot at professional baseball and began teaching industrial arts and coaching high school baseball in 1965, first at Amana and then at Norway, where he became assistant baseball coach under Bernie Hutchison in 1968.

Van Scoyoc also played baseball for the powerful Norway town team and worked as a part-time scout for the Cincinnati Reds and the Atlanta Braves for several years. Following his career at Norway, he was tapped as a pitching coach for the minor leagues in the Detroit Tigers organization and at Kirkwood Community College, retiring in 2008. He has tutored many local players at Perfect Game USA.

Twenty years have hardly dimmed the pain of watching the consolidation process that doomed the Norway schools, says Van Scoyoc.

“It still eats at me. That’s never going to change – how they went about it. It’s not just about sports. I’m a small town person and I believe in small schools. The number of kids that were pulled along – athletically, musically, dramatically – by kids with talent and got to experience success at some level, at a big school that’s never going to happen. I could see it in baseball with the senior kid helping the freshman, people helping someone to slowly spread their wings. It’s not the way things work anymore.”

As for the accuracy of the movie’s depiction of Norway’s final season, Van Scoyoc describes it as “semi-kinda, with a lot of scenes cut out that left huge holes, and some embellishments. I always wanted to know how they made movies,” he adds with a grimace, “and now I know.”

At the same time, he admired the film crew’s work ethic and enjoyed talking with Powers Boothe, the actor who portrayed him. “He had studied my mannerisms and a lot of people think he covered them pretty well. I always looked at myself as a little more athletic than Powers was. He was more cerebral, but a nice person.”

Currently “on the downside of 68” with two artificial knees, Van Scoyoc says he isn’t as fit as he once was. He rides his bike and walks a little, “and I enjoy the heck out of the garden, except for the mosquitoes.”

He’s been married for 44 years to Sheryl “Chick” Boddicker, the sister of former major leaguer Mike Boddicker, one of Van Scoyoc's prized pupils at Norway. The Van Scoyocs have three children (including a son, Aaron, who was drafted by the Yankees in 1988 and played minor league baseball) and six grandchildren. “I wish it was 106 some days – until they all make noise at once,” Van Scoyoc says with characteristic, if unconvincing, gruffness.