Kansas Profile – Now That’s Rural: Jace Kaminska, baseball
Oct. 4, 2023
By Ron Wilson, director of the Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural Development at Kansas State University
The little boy dreams of being a winner. One day he pictures himself winning a purple ribbon at the county fair, and maybe the next day he imagines himself as a major league pitcher, throwing strikes in the big leagues.
Today we’ll meet a young man from rural Kansas who is living that exact life. Thanks to Montgomery County Chronicle editor and publisher Andy Taylor and sportswriter Brian Thomas who are the sources for this story.
At right: Jace Kaminska | Download this photo
Jace Kaminska is a baseball player from Montgomery County. Andy Taylor first met Kaminska at an unlikely place 10 years ago: The 4-H baking championship at the Montgomery County Fair.
Kaminska was a little boy from Tyro, Kansas. He was proudly displaying his homemade bread loaf which had earned a purple ribbon. Taylor’s newspaper photo of the smiling little 4-H kid would stay in his mind for years.
Taylor next heard about Kaminska in a totally different context. Kaminska’s interests had transitioned from baking to baseball.
Kaminska was a teenager at Caney Valley High School and the word was out that he could throw a baseball like nobody’s business. Kaminska was coached by his father, Mike, who had played baseball collegiately at Northwest Missouri State. Mike’s mother Carrie had played softball there as well.
Because of Jace Kaminska’s torpedo-like arm, Taylor termed him the Tyro Torpedo.
Andy tells the story:
“Jace Kaminska was whiffing batters across the Tri-Valley League and picking up accolades across the state. By his junior year, he was among the top pitchers in all of Kansas — setting the stage for a senior season that would put him in a rare category of one of America’s extraordinary high school baseball athletes.”
It was spring 2020. The excitement about Jace Kaminska’s future baseball career was palpable. But then came an opponent that Kaminska could not strike out: COVID-19.
The pandemic hit. Shut-down orders were issued. The 2020 baseball season – Kaminska’s senior year – was cancelled one week into practice. It was heartbreak.
But even that could not take away Kaminska’s innate abilities. Opportunity remained. In the fall, he enrolled at Wichita State and joined the baseball team as a right-handed pitcher for the Shockers.
In his freshman season, he had an 8-1 record and a 2.31 ERA in 12 games, allowing just 16 earned runs with 51 strikeouts in 62 innings of work. He was named All-American Athletic Conference and was the conference’s Newcomer Pitcher of the Year. He was selected first team Freshman All-American by Collegiate Baseball Newspaper plus earning many other accolades.
Taylor continues the story: “In his junior season, he transferred to the University of Nebraska, where he was tested against the Big 10 Conference’s best teams. He was the Saturday pitcher for the Huskers — the prime-time slot that granted him plenty of fan attention, as well as TV camera time. It worked. Toward the end of the season, Jace Kaminska was a fan favorite in Lincoln — as evident by the fan ovations when the farm kid from Tyro would run onto the diamond for his opening pitch.”
The Tyro Torpedo continued to make his mark. He finished the season at Nebraska with a record of 7-3. He had 57 strikeouts and 15 walks in 72 innings on the mound.
In July 2023, the major league draft took place. In the 10th round, the Colorado Rockies selected Jace Kaminska from tiny Tyro, Kansas.
“We were just relieved when it happened and then super excited,” Mike Kaminska said. It was an exciting opportunity for someone from the rural community of Tyro, population 177 people. Now, that’s rural.
Of course, nothing comes easy in pro baseball. Kaminska will begin his journey in the farm system of the major leagues and go from there.
The little boy dreams of being a winner, whether it is at the county fair or on a big league pitcher’s mound.
We salute Jace Kaminska for making a difference by applying the work and skills to achieve success at the next level. For this young man, it is so exciting to see dreams come true.
Audio and text files of Kansas Profiles are available at http://www.kansasprofile.com. For more information about the Huck Boyd Institute, interested persons can visit http://www.huckboydinstitute.org.
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