Ely was very well represented last Saturday night at Target Field.
There would be no baseball on that January night, but instead a recognition of baseball achievement with former Elyites Jerome Nemanich and Tom Zbacnik among the honorees.
Nemanich was one of several new inductees into the state baseball coaches’ hall of fame, while Zbacnik was honored as the Class AA assistant coach of the year.
The recognition came as about 200 people gathered in the Legends Club at the downtown Minneapolis ballpark, for an annual awards banquet put on by the Minnesota High School Baseball Coaches Association.
First announced last fall, the hall of fame induction comes in the midst of a storied coaching career for Nemanich, a 1988 graduate of Ely Memorial High School.
He has been head coach at Sartell for over 20 years, amassing 314 career wins and guiding the Sabres to the state tournament as head coach five times - in 2004, 2005, 2021, 2022, 2023.
His Sartell teams have been Central Lakes Conference champions four times, and he has won section coach of the year honors five times.
Nemanich has also been heavily involved in Sartell’s summer baseball program, coaching at both the VFW and American Legion levels.
Prior to taking over as head coach, Nemanich was an assistant in the program at Sartell, where he has worked as a math teacher since 1993. He is also believed to be the only coach in Minnesota history to have coached teams in all four levels of Minnesota’s high school state tournament.
Nemanich got his coaching start in Ely at age 19 with both the VFW and American Legion programs.
He also spent three seasons with the University of Minnesota baseball program as a student manager, working under Iron Range native and longtime coach John Anderson.
A 1997 graduate of Ely High School, Zbacnik grew up in Ely’s baseball program but later was on the golf teams at both Vermilion Community College and Bemidji State University.
He returned to baseball when he went to work as a teacher, and has spent the last 21 years as an assistant coach in the high school baseball program at Esko.
Zbacnik was on the field when Esko won the state Class A title in 2023 and when the Eskomos took third in the state in 2024. He has been part of 11 Polar League championship teams and has also coached in Esko at the American Legion level.
In recognition of those contributions, Zbacnik has also honored as the 2025 National High School Baseball Coaches Association Region 5 Assistant Coach of the Year.
