When Kellen Kroger was a seventh grader and his family moved to Columbia Falls from Mitchell, South Dakota, he was resigned to playing non-school sports in Montana.

The Montana High School Association didn’t sponsor baseball at the time, for one thing. Same as his eighth grade through sophomore years. 

And then, in 2022-23, it did.

“I was stoked,” Kroger, who also plays hockey, said last week. “Because I never played a high school sport. I always played non-school sports. Now I could play with all these guys I knew. I could play with that guy out there — Reggie (Sapa).”

Kroger, Sapa and the rest of the Columbia Falls Wildcats are the Northwest A’s top seed into the second-ever State Baseball tournament, which begins Thursday at Ogren-Allegiance Field in Missoula. Kroger will take the mound Thursday against Hamilton at 6:30 p.m.

Columbia Falls coach Chad Green has a solid three-man staff, and Kroger is the senior leader.

“He’s not a very big kid, but he can flat throw,” Green said. “And hit. He’s hit several out in practice.

“He’s also a guy that puts in a lot of extra work.”

Green, noting the two-hour limit in practices, said he often sees his players putting in time on their own at Sapa-Johnsrud Field. On a recent Thursday, Sapa and Kroger were taking turns in the batting cage. 

“That’s why they’re finding the success they’re finding, because of the extra work,” Green said.
The stats bear Green out. On a team that has nine players hitting .300 or better, Kroger sits fifth with a tidy .418 average. He’s also one of four Wildcats with 23 runs batted in (Cody Schweikert leads in both categories, at .593 and 29 RBIs). 

On the hill, though, Kroger really excels, with a 2.73 earned-run average, an .896 WHIP and 43 strikeouts in 25.2 innings. That might be what he does in college; he’s thinking about playing at a junior college.

He’s been on the bump about as far back as he can remember.

“And about a couple years ago, it started to click more,” he said. Skylar Gengen and Steve Andrachick, two Glacier Twins assistants, ironed out his mechanics, Kroger noted; they also got him working on an off-speed repertoire. “I started throwing harder and harder each year, and that led me to fall in love with pitching more and more,” he said.

It also helps that AC Chilson has been catching Kroger from the day he got planted in Columbia Falls. 

“It’s always awesome to have a kid that you know and friends with back there,” he said of Chilson, who is hitting .512. “He knows what you’re thinking. You don’t call off any pitches.”

The Wildcats are 15-2 with one of their losses coming in a game Kroger pitched, against Whitefish. 

“It was a rough game,” Kroger said. “There’s no excuses. That kind of just got us going, and let us know we’re not invincible out there.”

They’ve won six of seven since, with the loss coming to state entrant Belgrade. Winning the Northwest A earned them their first trip to state, after a 2022-23 season in which they had to deal with the shocking loss of their head coach, Bill Sapa, to a heart attack. 

Those Cats muscled through to an 8-5 finish.

“This year we’ve come back a lot harder and ready to go,” Kroger said.

Michael Mitts hits .585 for the Cats, and Sapa checks in at .537. Dawson Juntunen (1.27 ERA) and freshman Jett Pitts (3.20) gave Columbia Falls three very capable starting pitchers.

But Thursday, Kroger gets the ball.

“He’s a competitor,” Green said. “He wants to win. As a coach who likes to win, I enjoy that.”