An All-Star Experience

If you’ve seen a baseball game anywhere in Door County during the past couple years, chances are you’ve seen Nick Kita. Kita, a senior at Gibraltar High School, has been around Door County’s baseball scene for as long as he can remember, and has played with the Door County Baseball League, the Nor Door Legion team, a six-week winter league in Appleton, as well as playing on Gibraltar’s varsity baseball team.

Nick KIta. Photo submitted by Brenda Kita.

In Gibraltar’s successful 2013 season, Kita lead the Packerland Conference with a .560 batting average, and finished second in voting for Packerland Conference Player of the Year (he missed by one point for the second year in a row).

Looking to take his baseball skills beyond the peninsula and northeastern Wisconsin, Kita signed on to play with the Wisconsin All-Stars U/17 team this past summer.

According to their brochure, “The objective of the Wisconsin All-Stars is to promote, market and develop the best high school baseball players from Wisconsin by participating in national tournaments, college camps, clinics.”

Not anyone can tryout to become an All-Star, it’s a selective process. Coaches place players names on ballots, and players are invited to tryout based on those votes. In 2013, 142 players were invited to tryouts, and 31 were selected for the summer and fall seasons.

The season started two days after school ended in June, and wrapped up in late July. The team is a college exposure team, so the emphasis isn’t on honing technique (because the players already know how to play), but on getting the players seen by different college scouts in hopes of garnering scholarships.

The team did not hold regular practices, but met up to play throughout the Midwest – Nebraska, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Oklahoma, Missouri – for tournaments. Kita said, “There was one practice before the season started, but it was during graduation time and not everyone was there. There was one other time we found a field and practiced.”

Kita said of his team’s makeup, “Two guys were from Appleton and about five were from the Milwaukee area. I was from the furthest north, and the rest were from southern Wisconsin.”

Photo submitted by Brenda Kita.

He adds, “I knew people from Appleton from playing regionally, but [no one else]. Coach [Terry Cool] had a rotation going, to see where your best spot of defense is, when it got figured out, we stayed in that position.”

Kita played mostly played infield at third and second as an All-Star, and racked up good stats in the process – he led the team in a variety of categories including home runs (2) and season batting average (.370). In high school Kita played catcher, but he says in three high school seasons he’s played three different positions [earning 1st team All Conference honors each year]. His favorite spot is catcher because, as he explains, “you’re in every game [play], you just don’t stand out in the field.”

Kita said about his All-Star experience, “It was a really good once-in-a-lifetime thing, you got to see a lot of good teams, good pitching and hitting.”

Kita has his sights, for now, on going to Ripon College to study secondary education and to play baseball, possibly alongside Gibraltar alumni Tom Sawyer and Matt Hecht.

Before his senior baseball season, however, Kita has to first focus on quarterbacking Gibraltar’s eight-man football team. He started practices for the team immediately after his stint as an All-Star.

The following local businesses sponsored Kita’s participation in the All-Stars: Piggly Wiggly of Sister Bay; Badger Wholesale; Triangle Distributing; United Fundraising – Alan & Rita Huffman; Carlson & Erickson Builders; True North Real Estate; Flanigan Distributing; Al Johnson’s Swedish Restaurant; Dave’s Tree Service; Door County Nature Works; Homestead Suites; Baileys Grove Campground; Arroyo Bay Grill; Summer Kitchen; RBC Wealth Management – Steve Abrahamson and American Family Insurance – Jennifer Boeckman.