Want success? Work hard

Back in a former life while writing sports in northwest Iowa, I had the privilege of covering Bancroft St. John High School. Don?t bother looking for it on a map, Bancroft is still there but the school has been reduced to an elementary school.

In the pre-1990s, St. John was Norway?s baseball equivalent without all the publicity.

That is probably because Bancroft was not near a large metropolitan area, akin Norway?s proximity to Cedar Rapids. You could see Minnesota from Bancroft and the nearest daily newspaper was 65 miles away.

Consequently, the only time you heard of Bancroft was in late July when the Johnnies made their annual pilgrimage to Marshalltown and the state baseball tournament. But they played baseball better than 95 percent of the high schools in Iowa. A guy by the name of V.J. Meyer coached there for about 40 years and won 1,500 games, a national high school record at the time.

When I arrived on the scene, Meyer was a year into retirement and his hand-picked successor Gene Meister was mentoring the Johnnies. Baseball was a year-round sport in Bancroft. At one time, Iowa had spring, summer and fall baseball. Many times St. John played in three state baseball tournaments in a calendar year ? spring, summer and fall.

Bancroft?s diamond success amazed me. Here was a collection of players in wool uniforms (yes, wool, just like they worn in the Major Leagues in the 1940s and 1950s) who always won. The Johnnies didn?t exactly ?ooh and ah? you. While they had a few players who looked like athletes, they were not dripping with athleticism.

But they still won and won some more.

For more on this column, see the March 4 issue of the Mt. Pleasant News.