Better late than never
Fifth-year pitcher John Solfest had his best season of his career, leading his team to a third consecutive MIAC Championship.
By Aiden Penner and CJ Wrzesien
As Boston’s “More than a Feeling” plays, John Solfest trots out to the pitcher’s mound at Bethel University’s Hargis Park. Solfest chose his walk-out song, “More than a Feeling” as a nod to his dad, whose favorite band is Boston. Solfest recalls many times growing up blasting the song in his dad’s old pickup.
“He likes to come out to these games here at Bethel and it’s always fun seeing him up there,” Solfest said. “I kind of picked that song for him.”
Sporting a royal blue 44Pro brand glove on his left hand and the number two, inspired by Derek Jeter, on the back of his cream colored uniform, Solfest begins tossing warm-up pitches to senior catcher Noah Wenberg.
Fastball and change-up. Arguably the most lethal pitch combo in baseball.
Typically Solfest’s go-to pitch is his split-finger change-up, but in this game against Saint Mary’s University, only nine of his 89 pitches were off-speed. The Cardinals never adjusted to Solfest’s 91-mile-per-hour fastball.
“He’s a man on the mound compared to where he was when he first got here. He wants the ball [and] we want him to have the ball.” — Brian Raabe, Bethel manager
Solfest threw all seven innings of the shortened first half of a doubleheader, giving up three hits and one walk, while striking out nine Cardinals in the 3–0 Royals win. Since a rocky start to the season against Buena Vista University in March, performances like this have become quite common for Solfest in 2024.
“I don’t feel like I pitched that bad. I threw strikes where I needed to throw them but they were just crushing everything,” Solfest said. “But since coming back to Minnesota I’ve been pitching pretty good.”
In 2024, Solfest struck out nearly double the number of batters he did in 2022 and 2023 combined. He’s also thrown more innings this season than both of his previous two combined, yet walked nine less batters.
“He’s a man on the mound compared to where he was when he first got here,” Bethel head coach Brian Raabe said. “He wants the ball [and] we want him to have the ball.”
Solfest, a fifth-year graduate student studying leadership foundations, didn’t start at Bethel. As a five-year-old growing up in Shoreview, Minnesota, just 15 minutes from Bethel, Solfest enjoyed playing Legos, Playmobil and dressing up as knights and cowboys. Solfest threw a fit when his mom signed him up to play baseball.
“I went to my first practice when I was like 5 and I had a blast and I’ve had fun ever since,” Solfest said.
Fun at Mounds View High School, where Solfest pitched when needed, hit and played shortstop. Then Solfest enrolled at North Iowa Area Community College and joined the baseball team. He played in 11 total games in the 2020 season, pitching in two for a total of nine innings. During the team’s spring break trip to Kansas, Solfest hit a grounder to shortstop and collided with the first baseman. He landed awkwardly on his right wrist, breaking his scaphoid bone and ending his season, although the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the whole team’s season two games later.
“I tried to look at it as I wasn’t really missing much because everyone couldn’t play,” Solfest said. “But it was still definitely tough.”
When Solfest tried to come back for his sophomore season, he tweaked his throwing elbow and sat out the whole season, coaching baseball at Mounds View instead.
That’s when he got in contact with Raabe who had scouted Solfest in high school.
“John, all of a sudden called me back and said ‘Hey, Coach, I’m thinking about coming to Bethel, I want to be a little bit closer to home, would you be interested?’” Raabe said. “It was a home run for us. I knew it would be and so it’s very exciting to get him to come here.”
In each of the three years Solfest has been at Bethel, the team has won the MIAC Championship, and Solfest has only improved with each year.
“I slowly started to get the feel back for pitching,” Solfest said. “It wasn’t great my junior year. Last year I had a little bit better year and then this year has been my best year.”
But he’s not done. In the MIAC semi-final against St. Olaf College, Solfest threw yet another complete game, his MIAC-leading fourth of the season, leading to the Royals’ third straight conference championship victory the next day. Now the Royals will face the University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse in the first round of the NCAA regional tournament, to whom they lost in the regional final last season. With Solfest starting, he will remain equipped with his fastball and change-up combo to continue to lead the Royals unprecedented success.
