2008 Woodie Awards
'The Final Season' swings into theatres
Tanya Gorsh, Rawson Agnew and Ben Sitzmann
Issue date: 10/11/07 Section: KSP News
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Kent Stock, former Norway baseball coach once asked his team that very question. That same 1991 team is the inspiration for the major motion picture "The Final Season," which debuts in about 1,000 theatres across the nation on Friday.
Cedar Rapids hosted a special premiere on Oct. 7 at the Wehrenberg Galaxy 16 Cine. The invitation-only event brought more than 600 people, including stars Tom Arnold, Powers Boothe and Danielle Savre.
"Seeing the movie brought back great memories. It was like reliving the 1991 season all over again," said Stock.
Norway is located 17 miles southwest of Cedar Rapids on a half-square mile strip.
Arnold, who plays parent, Burt Akers, explained, "The movie does a great job showing the real small town life and how important baseball is to it."
"Norway has a lot of pride," said Nathan Frese, an eighth grader who played on the 1991 team. Frese then went on to play seven seasons for the Chicago Cubs.
"Being from Norway, there was a lot of expectation to live up to. If I had grown up in another town where baseball wasn't a priority, I might not have turned out to be a ballplayer."
The Norway Tigers won 19 state championships from 1967 to 1990. In 1991 officials decided to merge Norway High School with a neighboring school due to budget cuts.
After Coach Jim Van Scoyoc was forced out, his assistant coach, Stock, became the new head coach. At the time Stock only had one-year of coaching experience.
Filming for the movie took 30 days and was primarily filmed in Eastern Iowa. Included in the movie are shots of rolling Iowa cornfields, Veteran's Memorial Stadium and even a glance at Norway's state championship trophies.
"I can't imagine shooting it anywhere else than Iowa," said Powers Boothe, who plays Van Scoyoc. "It wouldn't had made any sense."
Kirkwood alumni Crystal Keiper had the opportunity to be an extra in "The Final Season." According to Keiper, she found out how to be an extra in the movie after hearing a call for participants on the radio. She said she went to Veterans Memorial Stadium where she sat in the stands during the filming of the national anthem, which took approximately three hours to film and filming took approximately two hours.
Keiper said fashion artists dressed the extras in proper 1990s attire, styled their hair and applied make-up appropriate for the time period. Cardboard people were also used as extras in the stadium shots. "It was a very good experience and I would like to do it again," added Keiper.
"It was an honor to be on the team," Frese added. "Everyone before us went out as winners and we all wanted to win pretty bad."
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