‘How do you want to
be remembered?’
April 24, 2008
‘Final Season’ Coach Kent Stock and actor Sean Astin
to present Luther College Commencement address May 18
Kent Stock, the high school baseball coach who inspired the movie “The Final Season,” and Sean Astin, the Oscar-nominated actor who portrayed Stock in the movie, will be Luther College Commencement co-speakers on Sunday, May 18 when Luther confers degrees on 566 graduates of the Class of 2008.
Commencement ceremonies for the Luther Class of 2008 will begin at 10 a.m. in Carlson Stadium on the campus of Luther College. Tickets are required for admission.
A 1985 graduate of Luther, Stock will return to the site of his college baseball career to deliver the Luther Commencement address in conjunction with Astin, the internationally famous actor whose screen performances include the title role in the movie “Rudy” and Samwise Gamgee in “The Lord of the Rings” film trilogy.
“The Final Season,” which premiered in theaters nationwide in October and was released on DVD in April, cast Astin in the role of Stock in the story of Norway, Iowa’s high school baseball team in its bittersweet final season. The movie was filmed in Cedar Rapids and other northeast Iowa locales.
In one of the film’s most poignant moments, Stock rallies his team near the end of the difficult season with the question that becomes the movie’s core message: “How do you want to be remembered?”
Stock and Astin will reflect on that championship season of the Norway Tigers and the making of the motion picture that brought the small town’s inspiring story to the big screen. A school of fewer than 100 students, Norway consistently won state championships, playing against schools five times their size, was once on ESPN sports television, and was reported in Baseball Weekly and the Wall Street Journal.
In 1991, Stock was caught up in the small town’s conflict between tradition and progress. He accepted the head baseball coach position for one season during the school’s final year before it merged with a larger district, and against all odds he led the Norway team to a 20th, and final, state championship.
After his college days at Luther, Stock served as assistant baseball coach at Norway High School under coaching legend Jim Van Scoyoc, who had coached the Tigers to 19 state championships. In the course of the school district merger, Van Scoyoc had to leave his coaching position, and recommended Stock as his one-year successor.
Baseball as an icon of community identity is nowhere more genuine than in Norway, a town of 600 people that produced 20 state championship teams and sent dozens of players on to college and 16 to professional baseball.
“Norway High School winning that last state championship wasn’t about the baseball that I taught them, because they already knew how to play,” said Stock, who now serves as principal of Oak Ridge School in Marion, Iowa. “What I did in that final season was keep the players together, pick them up when they were down, and work with them as individuals.”
Based on the community’s struggle to save their identity and traditions-- and its triumph for one last shining moment, “The Final Season” immortalizes the legend of Norway High School. The film dramatizes the story of the team’s battle to overcome dissention and gloom, restore its integrity and honor, and rise to the challenge of winning a final championship.
Directed by David Mickey Evans, the film stars Emmy-winning actor Powers Boothe and Academy Award nominee Astin with a supporting cast that includes Tom Arnold, Rachael Leigh Cook and Michael Angarano.
Director Evans said although the movie’s message of never quitting affirms that spirit and character will prevail over misfortune, the film also has a bittersweet tone as the incredible legacy of Norway baseball comes to an end. But he believes it also has a message of honor and triumph. It is a “reminder that people can overcome big odds and do something special,” he said.