As you may have noticed by visiting our site, it has been a successful summer for LebCo’s youth baseball teams. Another team that of local players that is worthy of praise is the 14u Cedar Crest Team that, like their older Falcon brothers, made some noise in their second season as members of a Lancaster County-based league.
This was actually the first year where Cedar Crest was able to bring together all of the players within the district under a unified banner. As the start of the season, there were evaluations and the coaching staff placed the players according to their appropriate level of play. Resulting from this was a Cedar Crest team in each of the three sections within the Lancaster County Youth Baseball League.
Section One is the most competitive of these divisions and had fourteen teams playing. Cedar Crest’s entry finished with a 16-6 record. That record tied them for third place with Elizabethtown behind Lampeter-Strasburg and Donegal. This finish qualified them for the playoffs as the fourth-seed once the overall runs allowed tie breaker was utilized.
In the First Round of the playoffs, Cedar Crest squared off against fifth-seeded Mountville (Hempfield) in a three-game set. The Falcons lost the first game to Mountville by a score of 10-0. Unphased by the lopsided result, Cedar Crest took Game 2, 9-3. In the deciding game, Crest won 7-2 to advance to the LNP Tournament.
The LNP Tournament only allows the top four teams from Section 1. The tournament runs a double-elimination format and only allows the use of wooden bats. Besides Cedar Crest, the other teams to qualify for the tournament were Donegal, Conestoga Valley, and Lampeter-Strasburg.
In the first game of the LNP Tournament, Cedar Crest was matched up against Donegal. The final of that game was 9-0, with Donegal winning and sending Crest into the loser’s bracket to play against Conestoga Valley.
With the score tied 0-0 in the Bottom of the 6th inning in the elimination game and Eli Beard already onboard, Isaac Kreider blasted a two-run shot over the left-centerfield wall. The 2-0 score held, giving the Falcons the victory.
The exciting win set-up a rematch with Donegal. In their second meeting of the tournament, Cedar Crest battled hard and put up six runs on the team that had previous shut them out. Unfortunately, Donegal won the game 8-6 to end the season for Cedar Crest.
On the season, Beard and Kreider led the offense. Beard finished with a .524 batting average, while Kreider hit .408. Another critical piece of the third place finished was the pitching depth that Cedar Crest had at its disposal. Toby Trieskey tallied 6 wins, with Davin Kolter winning 4. Mason Copenhaver and Antonio Tirado each won 3 games.
With their first foray into the Lancaster County League as a single program, Cedar Crest may be putting in place a foundation that could pay dividends in future years. We’ll have to wait to see just how much of an impact it will have. For now, this team of Falcons can celebrate the success they found during the 2023 season.
Cedar Crest 14u Roster
Eli Beard
Lukas Schreier
Isaac Kreider
Mason Cevette
Toby Trieskey
Garrett Starry
Lane Miennert
Kasen Dudek
Davin Kolter
Brent Boyd
Antonio Tirado
Mason Copenhaver
A special thanks to members of the Cedar Crest Baseball community in helping to provide the information necessary to write this article.
