Comeback Vi-Kings: An oral history of New Berlin West's wild, dramatic run to the 2013 state title

Four games, four last at-bat victories. Three walk-off wins. An extra-inning victory after blowing a five-run lead. A walk-off suicide squeeze following a five-run comeback of their own just hours before. 

If submitted as the plot for a movie, even Hollywood would have turned it down.

But for the New Berlin West baseball team, it was reality. 

The dramatics of the Vikings' run to the championship will likely never be replicated. Late in the regular season, West righted the ship to clinch a share of the Woodland Conference West division. In the sectional tournament, the Vikings used walk-off victories to defeat Muskego and top-seeded Oak Creek. 

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That turned out to only be the beginning for the Vikings, a group that played loose and never appeared to be out of a game. Both times in extra innings and with a blend of strategy, execution and fate, they took down Kettle Moraine and West Bend West at state. 

This is the story of a team that simply had a date with destiny.

TIM RINK (New Berlin West junior utility player): It was later in the season, and I remember playing at the South Milwaukee tournament. We always played there. The day before, we played Pius and we lost that game. Then we went against South Milwaukee, and we lost that game badly. That’s when we all looked at each other and said, "We’ve got to stop messing around."

MIKE PHILIPPS (New Berlin West senior captain, game-winning hits in both state games): We just kind of fell into a lull at a point. We started taking things for granted, not showing up with the mentality to play and to win. You start playing to the level of your competition instead of playing to your best. We didn’t play well, and our coach kicked us in the butt. It was kind of a wake up call. It was a well-timed one.

TOM FARINA (New Berlin West head coach): After that game, I just basically said to them, “If you guys really want to do something special, we cannot practice nor play like this again.” They had a little conversation amongst themselves, and they didn’t lose another game the rest of the season.

AUSTIN FRITZ (New Berlin West senior pitcher): When we won our first playoff game, a lot of us just had this pep in our step that we were competing at our highest level. I remember telling my dad, "I don’t know what it is, but when I’m on the mound, I don’t feel like we can lose."

TOM FARINA: We’re in a sectional with Franklin, Oak Creek and Muskego. Certainly not to take anything away from our kids, because the belief was there and we knew we were a solid baseball team, but we were the big underdog. There's no shame in saying that, either. Those are three programs that are annually some of the best in the state. 

TIM RINK: The first game wasn’t anything special until the end. It was a couple runs here, a couple runs there. We were just a couple outs from getting to the final when they tied it in the top of the seventh.

MIKE PHILIPPS: As we go out to the field in the top of the 8th, (Farina) just looks at us and says, “Well, you better hold them to zero.” David Tsolak goes out there and throws up a zero when we needed it most.

AUSTIN FRITZ: In the bottom half, we get a leadoff hit and moved the runner over to second. Farina was a very big into small ball. He made everyone bunt. Not one guy on our team didn’t bunt during that season. It didn’t matter who it was, they were bunting at some point.

TOM FARINA: We get the runner over and Andrew Knoll hits a booming shot off the fence in right-center field. He always had such a good, quick stroke to the ball and it seemed to come through in moments like that.

TIM RINK: It was a pretty wicked rope if I do say so myself. We had this confidence that when the time came and we needed a hit, we would get it. A lot of that came from guys like Andrew and Allan Peil. Those were just two guys that, whenever you needed something to happen, they got it done.

TOM FARINA: The sectional championship against Muskego was right after that. It was almost the exact same situation as the semifinal game, which kind of makes you already start thinking about how crazy this tournament already is. Bottom of the seventh, right after they tie it up, Allan Peil is up with a guy on and he just rifled one off the fence in the same spot as Andrew’s. We’re headed to state.

DAVID TSOLAK (New Berlin West senior pitcher, went 18-2 over his final two years): It felt like, from my point of view, aren’t we destined for this?

STATE SEMIFINAL: SQUEEZING OUT A WIN

TIM RINK: We were excited to go to state, we were excited to play at Kapco Park. We had some special team-gathering stuff in the days before. It was David Tsolak’s birthday right before state, so we went laser tagging as a team just to try to get some of that energy out. This was all Coach Farina’s idea -- getting the team together and releasing our energy somehow, then having a couple of days of practice where we could focus on baseball.

DAVID TSOLAK: On the ride over to Mequon for state, it was dead quiet. There was no joking around. There weren't many words at all. It was just quiet. I think the nerves were kind of setting in. I was pitching, so I tried to be so prepared in my head with what I was going to do against Kettle Moraine that there was no room for talking to anybody else in that time. I don’t know if that’s why it was so quiet or if it was just nerves, but everybody was just so focused. It was kind of an overwhelming ride. It was pretty cool.

TOM FARINA: This was one of the most loose teams that I’ve ever seen, but for whatever reason, we just came out nervous, and Kettle Moraine took advantage.

DAVID TSOLAK: It was like 95 degrees outside, not including the fact that we were on turf field. I drank like seven Gatorades during the game.

MIKE PHILIPPS: That turf field, it felt like it was in triple digits out there.

TIM RINK: Their pitcher, Keith Koehn, was pitching super well. We made a couple mistakes in the field and they made us pay for them. The big stage, more fans at this game than any game we’ve played before, it just kind of got to us at the start.

DAVID TSOLAK: We’re down 1-0 in the third and they had the bases loaded against me, but I was still very confident at that point. Then we had an error that had three runs come in. That one hurt. I think I showed a little frustration on the mound.

AUSTIN FRITZ: You think of how you see games at state playing out and never in your head do you see yourself getting down by five runs through four innings. Errors played a huge role. When you commit all those errors, the baseball gods get you.

BRYAN WATSON (New Berlin West junior, scored the winning run in the final three playoff games): It was a little hard to stay in the game because you come into the game thinking, "We’re going to do this," and you go down early like that and hit kind of deflates you like that.

BILL ALBRECHT (West Bend West longtime head coach): It looked like we’d be facing Kettle Moraine for a while (in the championship), that’s for sure. We watched the game but didn’t scout all of the intricacies, but it looked like we were going to be playing Kettle Moraine for a title.

TIM RINK: The dugout was quieter than usual. There were more somber faces than usual. I remember, personally, that I popped out on a foul ball to right in what I thought would be my final at-bat of my junior year. Going back to the dugout, I said to myself, “Way to go dude. Nice one.”

MIKE PHILIPPS: We were struggling to get any offense going, but I don't think there was any doubt that we could eventually get our bats going. We had scored more than five runs in an inning so many times that year, we just had to do it one more time.

BILL ALBRECHT: ​​​​​​New Berlin West was a veteran team and they had a lot of good hitters, powerful hitters. The size of their guys compared to other guys at state was huge. They looked like a very mature team.

AUSTIN FRITZ: I remember this pretty vividly. Coach looked at us seniors and he just said, “What do you want? What do you want to do?” We obviously responded in a big way.

BRYAN WATSON: We went into that last inning down and they brought in a pitcher (Austin Wolf) that we had faced since we were 10 or so growing up. We knew exactly how he pitched, we knew exactly his tendencies and we were confident we could hit him.

TOM FARINA: We go into the bottom of the seventh down three, and the turning point was Darrin Sowinski beating out a grounder for a hit. He was very, very fast. He didn’t always show that, but you look at a moment like that where he beats one out that normally you’d think is a ground ball out. That kind of jump started the team.

TIM RINK: There were two outs in the inning. The Kettle Moraine fans were up and standing and hollering. Allan Peil was up to the plate with runners on and hit an awkward half-line drive to left field. The left fielder tried to dive and get it and missed, a couple of runs scored and we tied the game. At that point we kind of felt like this was our game.

DAVID TSOLAK: Allan didn’t have small clutch hits. He’d hit a double, hit it off the wall. He gave you more than enough confidence that he was coming through. When Allan came through, Allan came through in a pretty big way.

TOM FARINA: With two outs, they called timeout to talk with their pitcher. I just called (Peil) down from home plate to talk to him for a minute. When he came down, I put my hand on his shoulder and just said to him, "Be my hero.’" He looked at me as serious as can be and just said, “Okay.” A two-strike pitch, he just smacked it down the left field line to drive in the tying runs. It was one of those things where you just knew it was all going to happen. You couldn’t explain how or why. You just knew it was happening.

AUSTIN FRITZ: We go out for the eighth inning tied, thinking we’re going to get out of the inning and they get a run on this check-swing dribbler. It’s frustrating, but you just have to keep your focus on getting the next out and getting back into the dugout.

DAVID TSOLAK: The guy doesn’t have a check swing roller if it isn’t a good pitch. Weird things happen, so you just have to keep on doing your thing. We get into the dugout and I would have to say that I probably yelled a lot -- not at people, just encouraging things. I was very vocal in that way.

MIKE PHILIPPS: I don’t think I really said anything, but I could bet you that David Tsolak yelled a bunch of things.

TOM FARINA: We had runners on second and third with one out. First, the two guys got on. That was the most important thing. We bunt them over to second and third. I noticed their third and first basemen were playing fairly deep, and I had our nine hitter up in Tim Rink, who was a really good bunter. I don’t think twice about it and call for a squeeze.

TIM RINK: I wasn’t a great hitter, but I could bunt. I had been a pretty good bunter my whole life.

AUSTIN FRITZ: During the season, once a guy got on third, unless we were winning by quite a bit, we’d all look at Farina and see him put the signal on. We were always bunting in that spot.

DAVID TSOLAK: Small ball was every bit as important as hitting a homer to us. We got to a situation and we would all know we were going to squeeze bunt. It wasn’t a mistake, a question, secret. None of us were worried about.

TOM FARINA: Tim even said to me on a number of occasions, he was almost breathing a sigh of relief that I was giving him a squeeze bunt.

TIM RINK: Conveniently, the inning before they had switched pitchers to Austin Wolf. He’s a guy I had played against since I was 10 years old. I felt comfortable in the situation because it felt like I had been there before. He threw me a breaking ball, so I got kind of nervous halfway through the pitch. I kind of just stuck my bat out there and it bounced right in front of home plate. I was really excited that I didn’t miss because it was a pretty big moment.

BRYAN WATSON: They ended up throwing home on the play and the runner is safe by three steps. It set up perfectly for another bunt. 

MIKE PHILIPPS: I saw Timmy go out and drop down a suicide squeeze and I’m like, “Nice, nice.” I didn’t really even consider the fact that (Farina) was going to do a double suicide squeeze.

DAVID TSOLAK: I looked at the situation and said that we were going to do it again. Why not? My closest friend from high school, Michael Philipps, he’s up. Mike was extremely reliable. He was quite consistent in everything he did. When I looked up to see who was up and saw it was Mike putting down this bunt for the win, I wrote it off as a win.

TOM FARINA: I guess it’s unusual to do back-to-back squeezes, but it didn’t faze me at the time. So many people came up to me after the fact and said, “I can’t believe you squeeze bunted two plays in a row.”

MIKE PHILIPPS: The pitcher gets strike one on me, and that’s when I square to get the bunt down. The placement of it, it was in that sweet spot between third and the pitcher, not too far in front of the pitcher but not too hard past him, either. It just came right off the bat, cushioned it in a little bit. The team almost beat me to first base. I turned once I reached the base and they were coming for the dogpile.

BRYAN WATSON: Everyone on our team pretty much felt like he was going to call another bunt. I would bet that they weren’t surprised that Tim Rink laid down a bunt but were maybe slightly surprised that Mike laid down a bunt.

TIM RINK: Our coaches never really talked about what was in the future with us, they kind of just focused on how important bunting was. “Bunting was going to win us games, bunting would get us to state, bunting would win us games at state,” is what we’d always hear. Whether that was necessarily true, it was in one case, at least.

TOM FARINA: It was amazing to watch 16-, 17-, 18-year-old young men on that kind of stage not panicking, knowing what they were capable of and then going out there and doing it.

DAVID TSOLAK: At this point, we’ve won three straight games on a walk-off and there’s no doubt in my mind that we’re winning the it all. It’s happening.

STATE FINAL: THE LAST ACT

TIM RINK: Our coaches watched that West Bend West semifinal and scouted that game. They came to us before the Kettle Moraine game and said to us, “If you win this game, you will win state.”

TOM FARINA: Our kids just had about an hour between games. The temperature was in the 90s, so we went to go so sit inside one of the Concordia buildings. The kids were all just laying around, relaxing and when I walked in there, they were so calm -- they were 100 percent, totally calm -- I just looked at one of my assistant coaches and said, “They’re winning the whole thing."

BILL ALBRECHT: Our best pitcher, Jake Kopp, he only had so many innings that he could pitch. We didn’t start him. We were hoping and the game plan was that we could just stay even through four innings and then I could pitch him.

MIKE PHILIPPS: Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad to play back-to-back games, but we kind of just carried it over from the first game to the second game. We just keep on swinging the bats.

TOM FARINA: I remember that it was the third inning and they had a chance to get out of a jam, but Darrin busts it down the line to beat out a double play. They end up throwing it away, the inning keeps going and we go on to score three runs.

DAVID TSOLAK: Allan drives in two with a double in the fifth, we jump out to a five-run lead on them and it felt great. We’re like, “We got this thing, man.” Austin Fritz was pitching and in complete control at that point.

AUSTIN FRITZ: My fastball had a little more giddyup. In some of the recent games, in that Muskego game, I was feeling it as much as I could. Coming off that game, I had a little more confidence. My fastball was really working. My curveball was really working. I was just out there kind of in a zone. Being up the way we were, I was just having fun.

TIM RINK: Up 6-1, we really did feel like we were going to win it. It wasn’t being too confident or anything like that, but it’s just this good feeling. We had played lots of games this summer and lost very few. We had been in these kinds of situations, been in worse situations and we usually came out on top.

TOM FARINA: Fritz was pitching a great game, but then in the fifth and sixth inning, he got himself into a little bit of trouble. We made an error or two, he walked a few guys and couldn’t find the plate. We had to take him out and put in Mike Philipps to close the game.

MIKE PHILIPPS: As they score one, score two, I know that I’m the next one to come in and pitch. It’s just a matter of when, so you’re just out there wondering what batter it’s going to be and hoping it’s not too bad of a situation. Of course, I get put in with the bases loaded and they tie the game. I was no stranger to that kind of situation, but this time I just left the pitch kind of high and next thing you know, it’s a bases-clearing double.

DAVID TSOLAK: There’s this jet stream going out to right field. There’s what was essentially a pop up, and it carries 300-some feet and past me in right. Then stuff started to hit the fan. I remember when the game started to turn, I thought consciously, "Of course it’s us and we have to make it close somehow."

BILL ALBRECHT: It wasn’t looking pretty for most of the game, but that team was a scrappy bunch. They still had the same energy they had earlier in the game. We scrapped and clawed. That’s why I was really proud of that group. It wasn’t looking good, but our guys never flinched.

TOM FARINA: I went out to make the pitching change and I said to Austin, “Are you comfortable to catch a fly ball in left field?” He said, “Sure.” When I came back into the dugout, my coaches were looking at me like I was nuts.

AUSTIN FRITZ: I hadn’t played in the outfield all year.

TOM FARINA: The next batter hits a base hit and Austin picks it up in left field and has a play at the plate to get the tying run. He’s going to be out by 15 feet, and Austin just sails this throw over the catcher’s head and it sails off the netting.

AUSTIN FRITZ: At that moment, I was pretty pissed at myself. I felt like I was letting my team down. I became brothers with all these guys. It’s just like when you let down your family. I literally thought I had let down my team. I thought I had to do something really big when I was out there in the outfield, and that’s when that throw happened.

BRYAN WATSON: I'm thinking, "We can’t blow this." That’s all that’s going through all of our heads. This is our game to win. We had been saying all along that whoever won the first game was going to win this game. We can’t let it slip through our fingers like this.

DAVID TSOLAK: I really thought they were going to be up five after that inning. We really had to regroup after that one and focus on having a short memory. There was more ball to play. Of course, we don’t score right away, but Michael Philipps does what Michael Philipps does and throws a zero in the seventh.

EXTRA INNINGS

BILL ALBRECHT: We thought we were in a good spot. We didn’t have pitch counts then -- it was all by innings. We saved our best pitcher, Jake Kopp, in hopes of tying it up. When we did, we had our best pitcher on the mound. Things were looking good for us.

TOM FARINA: We get to the eighth and it was twilight. Two outs, a guy’s on and Mike hits this ball that looked like it was going to be a play that the center fielder could catch pretty easily. I looked out to the center fielder and he couldn’t see the ball. Everyone else had no chance to get there, so it just fell in for the go-ahead run.

MIKE PHILIPPS: It was a terrible hit. The pitch was high, it was inside and I was swearing to myself all the way down to first base. There’s no reason that should be a hit. It drops in the grass a little to the right of second between center and right. Between three people, it just dropped. I couldn’t believe it. The run goes home and I take off toward second and I’m thinking, ‘What the hell? There’s no reason that should be a hit. But there I am, the run is in and the rest of the team kind of took that energy and ran with it.

AUSTIN FRITZ: In summer baseball, we usually played at three or five. Not many teams get a chance to play under those lights all that often. That’s a different atmosphere.

BILL ALBRECHT: We lost a ball in the haze and the lights with the sun going down. Ninety-nine percent of the time, that ball is caught. The ball just got lost when the lights were beginning to take hold. That was really unfortunate and a killer way to lose a close game like that.

TIM RINK: We knew that that shouldn’t have happened for us, but it did and we had the lead, so we were just going to start swinging away. It was just hit after hit after hit. It was a hit parade for five, six hitters. We were able to put up five runs.

DAVID TSOLAK: To be honest, we all knew we caught a break, but big innings were our specialty. A lot of times we’d win games by snowballing in one inning like that, and it was enough to throw off the psyche of the other team.

AUSTIN FRITZ: Once we got to state, I don’t know what it was, but I wasn’t seeing the ball like I had been. I ended up coming up to hit after Mike and drove in a couple runs. That hit solidified a big relief for me. It really made the fact of being at state so much more valuable.

TIM RINK: Mike Philipps was still pitching and we knew he would be able to shut them down in the last inning. When you put up five to a team in the top of the last inning, it’s deflating.

TOM FARINA: As long as I’ve been coaching, I don’t care if we’re beating a team by 10 runs or whatever, because whenever those last three outs need to be made, I’m a pacer in the dugout. Here you are in the the state championship game, and I have never been more calm in my entire life. I just knew it was a matter of time before we get the outs.

DAVID TSOLAK: The outfield did something that we never, ever did, and it was the coolest thing. We go out and we’re five runs up, we know exactly what we’re getting from Mike on the mound. We’re like, “There’s no way we can lose this.” When we go out to the outfield, we decide we’re going to count down from three outs instead of counting up the outs in each inning like we usually did. To me, that was almost like a movie moment.

MIKE PHILIPPS: Our coach was trying to call different pitches, I later found out, and (catcher) Tyler Stephens, he just knew I was on at that point, so he was calling for fastballs to that low and away corner.

TOM FARINA: There was was a sharply hit ground ball to second base that Kevin Marx picks up and throws to first for the first out. Then, a line drive into the gap in left-center that Austin goes over and catches like he’s been out there his whole life.

AUSTIN FRITZ: It’s funny that I was out there all the time in the outfield in batting practice just trying to show coach that I could play out there, and here I was out there for the first time in a state final game making a big play.

DAVID TSOLAK: It was three outs left, and then two outs and then one more out. We get a ball hit on the second base side of our second baseman Kevin Marx, he runs over, picks it up cleanly and hits the glove of Andrew Knoll. Pandemonium.

THE CELEBRATION 

TOM FARINA: I looked at my coaches and said, “Just do me one favor. When the game ends, stay in the dugout and just watch the kids. Then we can go out there.” That’s what we did. We stayed in the dugout and just watched the kids throwing their gloves up in the air and jumping and dogpiling around the pitcher’s mound. To watch the exuberance of young men, the pure joy on their faces, that’s why we do what we do.

MIKE PHILIPPS: It was kind of just a freeze frame of seeing that final out go into the glove. I let the pitch go and I knew it was it. We make the final out and from there it’s all kind of a blur. You throw your glove up, dogpile with all of your teammates and it’s kind of just like, “Oh crap, we won state.”

TIM RINK: Everyone in our team just jumps in the air with no idea what to do. We were all just super excited. Celebrations ensued. There was another dogpile. Everyone was running in different directions. It was probably pretty comical to watch, to be honest.

AUSTIN FRITZ:  I was trying to run my fastest to get to the dogpile because everyone knew I was the biggest guy on the team, so they didn’t want me on top. Someone made a joke after, saying I was a bigger dude and I think I was on top of one of the smaller guys. It’s the little things like that that you remember.

MIKE PHILIPPS: I was talking to David before the game and said, “You know, I’ve never been in a dog pile before.” Go figure, I’m a the bottom of two dog piles in one day. And then the biggest guy, of course he ends up on top.

DAVID TSOLAK: It was the culmination of every pitch that I threw for hours after it got dark at home. I would throw every day, a lot. To put in all of that work to help create moments with this team to allow us to move forward and fulfill this dream for ourselves, our school, our coach, it was absolute elation. It was crazy.

AUSTIN FRITZ: It’s one thing to win a state championship, especially for the first time, but it’s another thing to have all the wins come at the end of the game. I don’t know if anybody else will ever do that again.

MIKE PHILIPPS: I got interviewed later and I completely forgot what I said. Someone said to me, “You gave such a good interview,” and I was like, “I had an interview?” I didn’t remember it at first. I was kind of just soaking the whole thing in.

DAVID TSOLAK: Nobody else thought we could do it. We were the underdog. People talked down about the Woodland Conference going into the playoffs. We knew were going to do it.

TOM FARINA: To give those kids an opportunity to experience that, it’s something they will never forget. For the rest of their lives, I told them, there’s nobody that can ever tell them they cannot or aren’t good enough to do something, because they proved it. Nobody can take away what they did.