The Opinion-Tribune's Male Athlete of the Year: Mackenzy Lang, Fremont-Mills
At 5-feet-9 inches and 160 pounds, Mackenzy Lang is rarely the biggest guy on the field, court or track.
But rarer even are the times Lang isn’t one of the best athletes on the field, court or track.
“I am in no way big,” Lang admitted. “I don’t have a lot of weight on me or height. I think there’s advantages to being bigger sure but I never saw my size as playing a part in how I played. I know what I can do and try and do my best every time.”
Lang’s best, that saw him earn all-Corner Conference honors in football, basketball and baseball in addition to being a standout track and cross country runner this season, was good enough to earn him The Opinion-Tribune’s 2014-2015 Male Athlete of the Year.
Fremont-Mills football coach Jeremy Christian can attest to Lang being one of those players who always played bigger than any perceived lack of size.
“He gives 110 percent at all times when he’s out there on the field, court, mound, wherever he is,” Christiansen said. “He’s a very gifted natural athlete who I think is so athletic he won’t know how good of athlete he is until later in life. Which is amazing. He could pick up a ball or a bat or he could probably pick up a motorcycle and just go and go well. He hasn’t even experienced enough sports to know how good of an athlete he is. Its exciting to watch him take off in any sport.”
Lang, ironically, isn’t sure from where his athleticism hails. Athletics don’t really run in the family, he said. Among his three siblings, he’s the only one to have played a varsity sport at Fremont-Mills. And neither Mom nor Dad, Lang said, are particularly athletic.
“I’d say I’m probably the only athletic one in my family,” he said. “I have no idea where my athleticism came from.”
Lang grew up playing any and all sports. He’s always favored baseball and basketball over football but in addition to track and cross country runner he was a soccer player until eighth grade. Fremont-Mills doesn’t offer varsity soccer.
There’s really only one sport Lang has ever tried that didn’t stick.
“I don’t golf,” he said. “The only time I’ve ever golfed was when I tried to see how far I could hit it.”
When asked what his favorite sport was, Lang responded quicker than one of fastballs.
“Definitely baseball.”
From little league through junior high and into high school, Lang has always considered himself a pitcher. To have the ball in his hands, on the mound staring down an opponent was a thrill he didn’t get playing in the outfield (his second favorite position). An ace pitcher for the Knights over the last two seasons, compiling a 14-3 record and over 200 strikeouts, Lang’s fastball has been clocked in the mid 80s. Historical baseball records are sketchy at Fremont-Mills, beyond the last two decades, but Christiansen said Lang is among the school’s all-time leaders in wins (22) and strikeouts (367).
Lang plans to attend Iowa Western Community College in the fall and participate in a showcase event for new prospects hoping to join the baseball team. He hopes to find a spot in the Reivers’ pitching rotation but it isn’t a deal breaker if he doesn’t.
“I’d like pitch (at IWCC) but I just want to play baseball, really,” he said. “I knew baseball was my thing and sports was the thing that got me through so I just feel like if I have baseball throughout college then it will help me stay in college and take me a lot of different places.”
While Lang may have found a home in baseball, at Fremont-Mills he found similar if not more success on the basketball court and the gridiron.
On the hardwood, Lang led the Knights in three pointers the last two seasons and scored more than 500 career points. In football, Lang ranks among the school’s all-time leaders in all-purpose yards (rushing, receiving, passing, kick and punt returns) with 3,817 total yards and 41 career touchdowns. Not bad for an athlete that calls football his “third favorite sport.” But it was in football, where Lang was a four-year letterwinner, that he saw the most team success playing in two state championship games – winning as a reserve as a freshman and falling 39-35 in a heartbreaking state championship to Newell-Fonda.
He calls the Knights’ loss in the Eight-Man Championship Football game one of his toughest personal moments.
“You put in all the hard work and effort and knowing you have a chance to win state, after not playing much on that championship team when I was a freshman, was really hard,” Lang said. “It was our goal to experience what that team did and to come up short by three or four points was hard. You want to succeed and it doesn’t always go you way. It was a really big heartbreaker.”
Lang admits he didn’t truly get over the loss until a month into the winter season when basketball consumed his competitiveness and time.
“Once we got into basketball and going into games it finally brushed away but it wasn’t easy,” he said.
Christiansen can attest to Lang’s dogged determination – on and off the field. As the Knights’ kickoff man, Christiansen had to adjust his kick coverage teams to account for Lang booting the ball and then being the first defender down the field to make a tackle.
“Most kickers kind of hang out after they kick it,” he said. “Mackenzy’s the first guy down the field looking for contact.”
Lang laughed when reminded of Christiansen’s change game-planning.
“Yeah, they (the coaches) always yelled at me not to do that and tried to get me stay back and play safety in case someone gets by and I’d say ‘I just want to him ‘em coach. Let me go down there,’” Lang said. “Finally they just let me run down and had somebody else stay back while I ran down there.”
In a typical football game Lang would line up at quarterback, running back, wide receiver, linebacker, defensive back, kick and punt return man and kicker. Being a good athlete is great but transferring that ability into varying positions and varying sports, with different demands of muscle memory and technical precision, is as much mental as it is physical. Lang talks of being able to slide from one sports as easily does between pitcher and centerfield and defensive back and running back as almost a state of mind.
“I think it is a mindset,” he said. “You have to feel comfortable with what you do. In (football) practice I’d throw the ball around and knew I could throw hard and be accurate because of baseball. I liked being a part of different packages in football where I could play all over. It’s a great experience being able to do a lot of different things.”
While baseball is his true love – “Baseball is the sport I look forward to all year,” he said – Lang bristles at the notion he doesn’t like football or basketball as much as any other sport.
“I don’t think there’s a like or not like scenario for each sport,” he said. “Baseball I was always interested in since I found out what baseball was. And basketball is fun but the conditioning, of all the sports really, is just so different. There’s nothing particularly bad about any of the sports. It’s just a preference of what I like more and what I feel I’m better at.”