Leader for life

A leader on the field for the Creston Panthers in the 1980s, Casey Bryant went on to become a career educator and one of the winningest high school baseball coaches in Iowa history.

The 1986 graduate will be inducted into the school’s Hall of Fame during an 11 a.m. ceremony Friday, followed by the homecoming queen coronation in the school’s auditorium. He and 1998 graduate Beth Litwak will also appear in the 1:30 p.m. homecoming parade and will be introduced at 6:20 p.m. at Panther Stadium prior to the football game against Atlantic.

“It was a pleasant surprise when the principal called me in early August,” said Bryant, now 56. “I got to play for some legendary coaches growing up in Creston who saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself.”

At Creston High School, Bryant played quarterback for head coach Dick Bergstrom on Creston’s first playoff team in 1985, and played point guard and shortstop (and pitcher) for longtime basketball and baseball coach Vic Belger. He was an all-state selection in baseball and all-state honorable mention in football and basketball, along with first team all-conference.

Both Bergstrom and Belger are also members of the school’s Hall of Fame, as well as Hall of Fame members in their respective coaches associations. Bryant was inducted into the Iowa High School Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Fame last January. Belger ranks 20th all-time in Iowa with 920 wins (920-319) and Bryant is now 54th in wins at 647-355.

Bryant’s teams have won two state championships in his 26 seasons as head coach at Western Dubuque. After playing baseball at the University of Dubuque and Mount Mercy University, Bryant began his teaching career at Resurrection School in Dubuque and coaching career at Dubuque Wahlert, where he coached the freshman baseball team under Hall of Fame coach Ed Feyen.

Bryant earned a master’s degree in guidance counseling in 1999 and joined the Western Dubuque staff, where he became head baseball coach in 2000.

“I was in guidance counseling classes with the Western Dubuque principal’s wife, and she started recruiting me to coach baseball there,” Bryant related. “Their baseball program wasn’t very good. They hadn’t been to state in 32 years when I got there. Their top athletes weren’t playing baseball. I think one of my major accomplishments is joining a school not known for baseball, to a point where it’s a program contending to be in the top 10 every year. We’ve had a dozen Division I kids, and we have one now (Calvin Harris) in the AA playoffs professionally with the Birmingham Barons.”

Bryant has guided the Bobcats to six conference championships, seven state tournament appearances and the first state titles in school history in 2022 and 2023. Bryant has earned three district coach of the year awards from the Iowa High School Baseball Coaches Association and two state coach of the year awards. He has coached in four all-star series.

Casey and wife Jennifer are the parents of three sons who each played for their father at Western Dubuque — Ben, Nick and Drew.

Advanced preparation

Bryant’s program is known as one of the innovators in use of analytics and video scouting, both on opponents and its own players. Players receive emails about their at-bats, with questions about their decisions, and charts showing their “hot” and “cold” zones to help them in pitch selection.

Opposing pitchers at tournament time are scouted in detail, with pitching machines set up for batting practice to mimic the exact velocity and movement of those pitches.

While demanding and a stickler for detail, the culture of Bryant’s program is supportive and positive.

“In baseball there’s so much failure, you’re getting out seven out of 10 times,” Bryant said. “You can’t destroy a kid’s confidence. We don’t yell at a kid in front of their peers after a bad mistake. Nobody wants to make a mistake and nine times out of 10 they already know what they did wrong. We’ll let them think it through for an inning or so and let the emotions die down, and then maybe have a conversation about what they were thinking. Then, it’s important to listen. They want to do what it takes to be successful, so why be confrontational?”

Athlete of Year

Bryant was Creston’s Outstanding Male Athlete from the class of 1986, with key leadership roles in three varsity sports.

Bryant was quarterback of the Hawkeye Eight Conference’s top offense in 1985, when the Panthers went 5-2 in the league and 7-3 overall as the school’s first playoff qualifier. The Panthers beat Pella 34-7 in their first playoff game before falling 21-11 at Harlan.

Bryant passed for 1,400 yards with 14 touchdowns and gained 500 yards rushing. He was also a starting safety and led the conference with six interceptions.

“I grew up in a time when Creston athletics was a little under developed. We weren’t really strong in anything,” Bryant said. “Being the first team to make the playoffs in football was a pretty big accomplishment to me and my teammates.”

Scott Driskell, Creston activities director, was a middle school student at the time. He said he and his peers looked up to Bryant and the players of that era. Driskell would later pitch in a state championship game and play quarterback in the 1990 Iowa Shrine Bowl.

“When we got old enough to start playing sports in junior high and start paying attention to the high school sports, Casey Bryant was ‘the guy’ in high school,” Driskell said. “He was great in everything. Then when you think about all of the success he’s had beyond that in coaching, you see a lot of correlation to the time when he was the guy everybody looked up to here.”

In basketball, the Panthers were 16-5 during Bryant’s junior year with other standouts such as senior Brad Baker and sophomore Matt Somers. Bryant and Somers both averaged 18 points in an 11-10 season the following year. Bryant set a school 3-point record at the time with 40 as a senior, when he and Somers made all-conference first team and all-state honorable mention.

“He was a good all-around athlete and ran the offense for us as our point guard,” said Belger, now 84 and living in Waukee. “He was a competitor and a winner. From the beginning, you could see that he looked at things a little different. He could see a little further ahead than the other kids could. He had the desire to want to be good, too. He would always work on something to be a better player.”

Bryant was a five-year starter in baseball for head coaches Tom Barnes and Belger. Later, Barnes was his coach at the University of Dubuque.

Baseball honors

As a junior Bryant set a school record with 38 RBIs and led the baseball team in runs (38) and home runs (7). He batted .432 and was named first team all-conference and all-southwest Iowa by the Omaha World-Herald.

The Panthers won a total of 40 games his final two seasons. Bryant and Somers were the top pitchers in 1986 when Bryant batted .415, earning all-state recognition by the Des Moines Register. Dave Hartman, most recently head softball coach at Creston before taking the softball job at Marshalltown Community College, was a young assistant coach for Belger that year.

Bryant hit 15 home runs during his high school career.

Bryant played three seasons at the University of Dubuque, where he set the single-game pitching record with 15 strikeouts, before earning NAIA All-American accolades at Mount Mercy University as a senior.

Bryant also played 18 years of semi-pro baseball for the Peosta Cubs. He was MVP of the tournaments in Kieler and Cascade in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Bryant is the son of the late Robert Bryant and the late Carol John. His siblings are Julie Manning, Robby Bryant, Regina Williams, Raelynne Hillius and Troy John.

Bryant said he looks forward to Friday’s ceremony and homecoming activities this weekend in his hometown.

“Always proud to be a Panther,” he said.