GETS HIS CALL TO THE HALL - Medford’s Berndt to be inducted Saturday

GETS HIS CALL TO THE HALL

There was a time a young Virgil Berndt was certain if he was going to be a successful coach, it was going to be in baseball and wrestling.

On Saturday night, he’ll finally get his due in the sport that wound up being his calling and passion when he and three others are inducted as the class of 2025 into the Wisconsin Fastpitch Softball Coaches Association Hall of Fame.

Berndt will be entering his 35th year as the head softball coach at Medford Area Senior High when the 2025 season begins in mid-March. In fact, he remains the only head coach the program has ever had.

Not long after its humble beginnings in the 1990-91 season, Medford’s program became one built on consistency. Rarely have the Raiders not had a winning record or at least been a contender in conference championship chases and a team people are keeping an eye on each post-season.

After 429 wins, 10 conference championships, seven WIAA regional titles, two sectional championships and state appearances and 10 Lumberjack or Great Northern Conference Coach of the Year awards and three assignments to coach WFSCA All-Star teams, some might say the call to the hall is overdue.

“I don’t even know what to say,” Berndt said in a Jan. 21 interview. “It’s been a lot of years. A lot of people made it possible. There have been a lot of coaches, a lot of players, a lot of people involved. I remember going to my first Hall of Fame banquet and seeing those guys up there and thinking, ‘wow.’ Never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d be standing up there.”

During Saturday’s Hall of Fame Banquet at Chula Vista Resort, Berndt will be presented by his children, Mandy, Tyler and Samantha. Mandy and Samantha are two of the hundreds of players to come through the Raiders’ softball program in 35 years.

Making the event even better is that Berndt is quite familiar with the other three inductees in this year’s class –– Tony Porath, the head coach of an always-strong New London program for 28 years; Ann Molski, who is entering her 21st season as the head coach at small-school power Stevens Point Pacelli, and Sue Stoltenberg, who is entering her 28th season as the head coach at Wausaukee and an active member of the coaches association.

Berndt got the call informing him he was among the newest inductees a couple of months ago from Brad Ceranski, a longtime friend in the coaching ranks who is now at Fall Creek. Berndt said he’s not sure who was all involved in nominating him, but among the several coaches he does know were stumping for him included Gilman’s Brian Phelps, a 2023 inductee, and Hurley’s Jim Kivisto, a 2019 inductee.

“It’s exciting at first, but now I’m getting a little nervous,” Berndt said of preparing his speech and presentation. “It is a neat thing they do down there. It’s pretty cool.”

Berndt joked that his résumé doesn’t quite compare to those of his fellow inductees because it doesn’t include a state championship or two. He said one of his primary goals in coaching has always been to make the game fun and to be in it 35 years, he and his teams have found plenty of that.

“We’ve had a lot of fun teams, a lot of fun years,” Berndt said.

The journey to the hall

Berndt grew up in the small town of Clarissa, Minn., located west of Brainerd and, according to Berndt, “smaller than Stetsonville.”

He attended St. Cloud State University and near the end of his time there, found his way to another nearby smallish town, Foley, where his journey in coaching high schoolers began.

“When I was getting out of high school, I knew I wanted to teach and coach,” Berndt said. “But that was going to be baseball and wrestling. It was kind of a fluke how I got into a girls sport.”

While doing a baseball practicum with Foley’s varsity baseball team, the head coach asked Berndt to coach the American Legion team for a summer, plus he was asked to fill a potential opening as the JV baseball coach the following spring. At the varsity level, Foley’s baseball team was struggling at the time, but Berndt said the group found some success that summer, making it to the state’s Legion playoffs. He student taught at Foley the next school year and he and Cindy, his wife of 38 years, were starting to feel like Foley would be home.

“I was coaching baseball in Foley and loving it,” he said. “Cindy and I worked there. She worked in a nursing home and I was bartending and working at a supper club. Did that practicum that year. The head coach was a great guy.”

However, the JV baseball coaching job fell through when the coach who was expected to step down did not.

“So they asked, ‘how about girls softball?’ I said, ‘I know nothing about the fast-pitch game. I’ve never played. I’ve never even watched it,’” Berndt said. “In northern Minnesota we didn’t have fastpitch in those little towns. I never saw a game until that first one I coached. So I coached girls JV that year. That was a good experience. Then I student taught in Foley and they asked me to do the JV girls again. So I did and that was a fun year. I had basically the same group back.

It was kinda weird. We wanted to stay in Foley. We liked Foley. When they asked me to coach girls my thought was any way to get my foot in the door. I’ll do whatever you want me to do.”

Cindy Berndt is originally from Nekoosa and, at the time, her brother, heard about a teacher interview day that was being held at Wisconsin Rapids where candidates could interview and introduce themselves to officials from numerous districts at one time. Virgil Berndt went through that process.

Medford’s Brian Kulas and John Penn were among those in attendance.

“You sat around with 15 people and they asked all the normal questions,” Berndt said. “The last question was, does anybody here have girls softball coaching experience? I raised my hand. I didn’t elaborate that it was only JV and I didn’t know much. I remember when Brian Kulas called me. He called me and said he was from Medford and he was calling to offer me a job. How does fifth grade sound with girls softball? We need a girls softball coach. Little did they know they were getting someone who didn’t know anything, and little did I know that they were just starting the program. It was a perfect fit. Nobody knew any better.”

The first year was a challenge with about 70 girls initially signing up and Berndt starting out as the only coach. Eventually volunteers helped pick up the slack and before long JV and freshman coaches were hired, a middle school program was eventually formed and work was put toward creating summer opportunities for kids to play, something that hadn’t existed locally.

The key figure in helping Berndt build the program was Jay Murray, who held an assistant position for 14 years. He now lives in southern Wisconsin.

“Jay was really important to the start of the program,” Berndt said. “Very, very important. He had that fun, goof-around attitude that kept it loose.”

The first Medford softball team of 1991 won one game, beating Phillips 13-7. The second team went 9-5 and the third team won the 1993 Lumberjack Conference championship with a 10-2 record and went 13-5 overall.

“I got a lot of help from people,” Berndt said of the start-up process. “Marshfield coaches came up and did some stuff with our pitchers. (WFSCA Hall of Famer) Darrell Laschen from Loyal, we scrimmaged them and he gave me some pointers. (WFSCA Hall of Famer) Bob Tomlinson from Poynette came up and did some camps for us. So we got a lot of help from a lot of coaches right away. Of course you learned a lot from getting your butt kicked too. It was a totally different game back then.”

After some ups and downs in the mid-1990s, the Raiders took steps forward in the late 1990s and into the early 2000s. They tied for a Lumberjack Conference title in 1999, took second in 2001 and were starting to knock off teams like Marshfield, Wausau East and Wausau West in the Division 1 tournament.

Medford dropped to Division 2 in 2002 and made it all the way to Madison in 2003, going 11-1 and winning the Lumberjack Conference and going on an 18-game winning streak during a 19-3 season. They were led offensively by Michelle Butkus, who went on to play for an NCAA national championship team at UW-Eau Claire, and Amanda Jochimsen (now Lange), who took over the pitching duties early in the season. Several team members were among a core group of girls that completed a rare trifecta of qualifying for WIAA Division 2 state competition in volleyball, basketball and softball that school year.

“It got to the point later on where the big thing was we have to get a team down to that state tournament,” Berndt said. “So we started taking some girls down to the tournament telling them we can play down here. And then we got that ’03 group. We caught some breaks. We got some breaks in the sectional, but that was a good team. We got hot.”

The Raiders lost their 2023 state semifinal game to Union Grove 6-0. The 2004 Raiders won the regional championship, the 2005 team fell in the regional final and then the 2006 team rode a potent offense and an incredible season from senior pitcher Nikki Beyer to state. Those Raiders went 12-0 in the Lumberjack, shut out a good Rice Lake team 5-0 in the sectional final and had its chances but couldn’t get the big hit in a 3-0 state semifinal loss to Greendale.

Medford hasn’t been back to state since, though there have been some near misses. In 2015, the Raiders would’ve been a sectional contender and were one out away from beating defending state champion Mosinee in the regional final but lost 6-5. The 2021 team finished 21-3 and was a strike away from advancing to the sectional final, losing in extra innings to Merrill. The 2023 team was 22-3 and also a strike away from getting to final before losing in extra innings to Porath’s New London team.

But to Berndt, the journey has been about much more than trophy games.

“Obviously the state tournament trips were highlights, but there are so many highlights,” he said. “Have we had teams since then that were good enough to get down there? Absolutely. We’ve been one strike away a couple of times. I’ve always said that too. You have to be good, but you have to catch some breaks and get lucky once a little bit too.

“I can think of a couple of conference titles where we weren’t supposed to even compete,” he added. “To win those titles we overachieved big time. There are some of those years too. There’s disappointing years where you should be moving on and other years where you’re not expecting to and you overachieve. Those are pretty cool too. There are just so many memories over the years.”

As for disappointments or losses that are hard to shake, there are several, particularly those playoff losses just mentioned. The other big one is the wins and losses of 2020 that never happened.

“Losing the Covid season, that was a season I had looked forward to for years knowing what was there,” he said.

As a teacher, Berndt put in more than 30 years at Medford Area Middle School before retiring after the 2020-21 school year. Upon arriving in Medford, he quickly struck a friendship with another new teacher that year, Tim Raymond, and wound up coaching in Raymond’s wrestling program for 15 years.

As most locals know, Cindy Berndt is the owner of Cindy’s Bar and Grill just west of Medford which, with its lighted field, has become the area’s most popular spot for weekend slow-pitch softball tournaments. The Berndts have six grandchildren, Gannen, Sawyer, Savannah, Raya, Carson and Jackson.

“I don’t have any family left in Minnesota anywhere,” Virgil said. “To come here, I gained three brothers in law. It’s just been a great fit.”

Still going

How much longer Berndt will stay as Medford’s head coach is a year-to-year decision, but he and Ron Fisk, his righthand man since 2007, will be back for another spring in 2025. To some it seemed logical Berndt may step down once the strong crew from the 2021-23 seasons, led by record-breaking pitcher Martha Miller, graduated, but he said it never really entered his mind.

“That’s what I said after Martha’s years,” Berndt said. “I don’t want to be the guy that leaves right after her.”

Plus, he is excited about what this year’s team could do. While inexperience showed often during last year’s 13-11 season, most of that group is back and plays a lot of quality softball in the offseason.

Over 35 years, the game has obviously changed a ton. But the basics of run scoring and run prevention are still what softball comes down to.

“The game is just a lot faster,” Berndt said. “The pitching is totally different with changing speeds and movement. Back in the ‘90s you just wanted to throw strikes. Now if you do that, you get killed.

“I always wanted to get girls to understand the game,” he added. “It’s not difficult. I wanted them to understand the game and be able to react and not think. I enjoy seeing kids be successful whether that means they hit .500 or if they finally caught that first fly ball that they’ve never caught before. Success is different for each kid.

And we always wanted to make it fun.”

MATT FREY/THE STAR NEWS

BOB MAINHARDT/NORTHWOODS RIVER NEWS

The Medford softball program has made two WIAA Division 2 state appearances under head coach Virgil Berndt. In the top photo, the 2006 team tries to catch him with an ice water shower after winning the sectional championship game over Rice Lake. Below, Berndt talks with the 2003 team after its 6-0 loss to Union Grove in the state semifinal game at Goodman Diamond in Madison. FILE PHOTOS BY MATT FREY/THE STAR NEWS