May 23, 2011
Despite losing two games and tying two games in our last week of baseball it proved to be a memorable experience for everyone on the team. The people at Prasco Park go all out every year to put on an amazing tournament and all the guys on the team were very impressed with the facilities and the amount of thought put into every detail at the 2011 NCCAA World Series. Prasco's vision is impressive and their attitude about serving those around them is contagious. They think big and God has certainly blessed them with the resources to continue to serve Him in an impactful way. From the video gaming station, free ice cream truck and inflatable obstacle courses to Prasco's impressive baseball facilities I think it is safe to say that Prasco's approach to Christian service could be summed up with the phrase that “if it’s Christian it should be the best.” At Prasco they put on the best possible tournament and it is a great privilege go down there and compete. If anyone reading this wasn't able to make it down to the tournament to catch some of the baseball games I would highly encourage them to make it a priority to go next year to experience what Prasco is doing for NCCAA baseball and to watch your Cedarville Yellow Jackets bring home an NCCAA title!
This is my final blog and the memories that I've had over this past year are too many to include in the few blogs that I've had the privilege to write over the course of this season. Getting my pants stolen, wrestling with Dan Petke and Tyler Rost, watching the Ledbetters cheer from the bench, seeing the tension rise and fall as Nate Davenport began to date Mike Roe's sister, hearing about Derek Ogle enjoying the rain and flooding on campus … these are all experiences that myself and the other seniors will never forget and we are all thankful to the guys on the team for the friendship and for sending us out with one of the most exciting and successful seasons in Cedarville baseball history!
Thanks for all the memories everyone. I am now officially a Cedarville baseball alum and I have to start preparing for the real world and marriage! To everyone following Cedarville baseball, thank you for your prayers and support, it was much appreciated!
May 16, 2011
The weather last week changed for the better and we played our regional tournament against Bethel College in 80+ degree weather! It was nice to play in some warm weather and our team play certainly picked up in the prime weather conditions as we pounded out lots of hits and pitched really well. Even weirder than the weather being nice last week was the fact that we had to go to Bethel College to play our regional tournament because Spring Arbor had an outbreak of a virus on their campus!
As we were driving towards Spring Arbor the night before we were supposed to play, Spring Arbor called and told Coach Manes about the virus situation. We immediately all started trying to Google the type of virus that was told to Coach Manes to see how serious it was. We didn’t find much but apparently it was serious enough that we had to move the tournament and Spring Arbor was no longer able to compete in the tournament. While driving down the interstate, Coach kept speeding up then slowing down and then drifting one way or the other. Despite his eratic driving, Coach Manes was able to successfully coordinate the move of the regional tournament from Spring Arbor’s field to Bethel College’s field and managed to get out of our hotel reservations in Michigan and get new reservations in Indiana. At times we worried for our lives, but we had a movie to keep us distracted and in the end “the Old Ball Coach” got the job done.
After safely arriving in Mishawaka, Indiana we got unpacked and hit the sack. The next morning we had time to relax and eat a good breakfast before our game started at 2:00 p.m. At 11:45 a.m. we started out for the field and the rest is history. We swept Bethel College in two games to take the regional title and earned an automatic bid to the NCCAA World Series at Prasco Park. We practiced today at 1:00 p.m. and then tomorrow we will have a light practice before heading down to Mason! Prasco puts on a great tournament down there and we are really excited to have the opportunity to compete for a championship!
May 9, 2011
We are officially done with the semester and now everyone can really start to enjoy baseball! Last week we had light practices during finals week. All the guys survived finals, myself and the other seniors finally graduated and now we can begin to relax and play some baseball.
On Sunday, everyone had to move out stuff from their dorms and relocate to Lawlor. Packing and then unpacking was an all day affair and Ogle was lucky enough to be the only guy on the team with a truck. Ogle started helping move people around 11 a.m. and when I went to bed around 1 a.m. he was still helping some of the guys move!
There is never a dull moment in Lawlor with all the baseball guys living so close to each other. Something is always happening and noise is always being made. As Ogle and I were moving in to our room Cullen and Nesteroff were trying to set up surround sound in their room by combining their speakers. On the other side of our unit Davenport has a flat screen and an Xbox set up. Recently, the game that everyone has been hooked on is online pool. The guys found out that if everyone clicks to join a tournament at the same time they can get into the same online tournament.
There is nothing better than May baseball. Lots of hanging out, playing games and of course lots of baseball. We have practice today and then on Tuesday we head up to Michigan for the NCCAA Midwest Regional tournament!
May 2, 2011
This past week has been a whirlwind and we weren't set down out of the whirlwind very gently. We played three back-to-back days of double headers finishing up two rained out games we had with Mount Vernon Nazarene University and closing out our regular season with a four-game series against Point Park where we dropped the last two games of the double header along with any chance of making the conference playoffs.
It was a tough end of the week for us but on the bright side we did take a charter bus for the first time this season to Point Park. I'm sure all the guys would agree that it was quite a treat. One of the main luxuries of a charter bus is the fact that there is enough room that a person can sprawl out comfortably on the floor of the bus as long as he brings an ample supply of pillows and extra clothing to soften the hard floor. There were several of us that took advantage of this luxury and we were able to log a solid two to three hour nap on the way to Point Park!
This week we will only have practice and if possible a game near the end of week. All the guys have lots of studying to do as it is finals week. We will be practicing this week in preparation for our post-season trip to Spring Arbor where we will play in a regional tournament in order to qualify for the NCCAA National Tournament.
Thanks for all your support and prayers throughout the season! Please continue to pray for us in the post season!
April 25, 2011
The past week has been crazy with all the rain we've been getting. We had to reschedule games twice and were forced to practice inside much of the week because of all the rain. Campus was absolutely flooded one day and some of the guys really enjoyed riding around in the rain, some especially enjoyed riding around more than others. On one particular road on campus there was probably about five to six inches of standing water because the storm drains were backed up. As you can imagine, driving through that much water in a vehicle made a pretty big splash, as a matter of fact it made about a ten foot wall of water. Needless to say the opportunity to enjoy the rainy weather was not missed. While some innocent bystanders may have been “baptized” by water that day, it should be noted that it was raining so hard that they were already as soaked as possible and a little extra water wasn't going to make any difference.
Later in the week we split our double header with Mount Vernon University (MVNU) and we really should have won the second game. We were in the drivers seat and then we just lost it for one inning and it costs us the game. I think rainy whether pretty much sums up last week and from the looks of the forecast this week isn’t going to be much different. This will be a very important week for us. This past Saturday we were supposed to play MVNU again but due to rain it was canceled. So all the guys were able to head home or to a teammates’ house a little early for Easter. Our game was rescheduled for Monday, but as you can probably guess it was canceled again and moved to this Thursday, which leads to our important stretch of games this week. On Thursday we have our rescheduled double header with MVNU. On Friday and Saturday we have back-to-back double headers with Point Park University. These next six games will be HUGE for us and will make or break our season. These games will be the deciding factor as to whether we make the conference tournament or not!
Please keep us in your prayers as we all have lots of work to finish academically before the end of the year and some big baseball games coming up!
April 18, 2011
Two weeks ago, while we sat in the dugout during a rain delay, Nathan Davenport and Dan Petke started scheming to buy teal hats specifically for our Fifth Third game against Urbana. After lots of talking on the phone to Lids and to several school administrators we finally got the deal worked out and had the hats delivered to the field just before game time! For pulling everything together in a week the hats were pretty sweet. All the guys really liked them and a lot of the fans that watched the game really liked them too. In fact, Dr. Brown was given one of the teal hats and he wore it most of the game!
Not only did we have sweet hats but we pulled off a great win against Urbana. They are a solid NCAA Division II program and we were able to defeat them 5-0. It is always a lot of fun playing at Fifth Third Field in Dayton and the sports management program did a great job organizing the game. We had about 700 fans at the game too! Thanks everyone for coming out!
On Thursday we were able to split at Walsh and then our games Saturday were rescheduled for Monday. Sunday night we actually had to get the team together to pull the tarp over the field in case it rained Sunday night I think that was the fastest we ever pulled the tarp out.
We have games Monday with Walsh and then later this week we will play Mount Vernon Nazarene University. MVNU is at the top of the conference so those will be big games for us! Keep us in your prayers and come cheer us on at our games!
April 11, 2011
Just last Saturday an historical event took place for Cedarville baseball. We played our first-ever night baseball game under the faint lights of the tennis courts shining from about 200 yards away behind the center field fence. The lights from the tennis courts did little if anything to light our own field and they were probably more of a hindrance as they were right at the release point of the pitchers throwing from the mound. This made it hard to pick up the ball coming out of the pitchers hand, but despite our field lacking adequate lighting (Coach Manes is looking for donors to fund the installation of lights on the field) we managed to sweep Malone and avenge both of the losses we sustained on Thursday.
Prior to our “night game” we sat in the dugout for two hours waiting for our first game to start. Position players showed up to the field at 10:30 a.m. to start hitting with a 20 minute break from 11:30 – 11:50 a.m. for lunch. After lunch we came back to the field and began taking infield around 12:10 p.m. We got half way through our pre-game infield routine before the rain started coming down. We then frantically pulled the infield tarp over the field with the help of the Malone team and proceeded to wait in our dugout until the rain stopped. We didn't start the first game of our double header until about 4:00 pm so to pass the time many of the guys played “Words with Friends” on their smart phones or talked on the phone and snacked on food. After about an hour of sitting David Ledbetter started getting antsy and hungry so he went looking for food. About five minutes later he came back with a trash bag full of cheeseburgers and hotdogs. Somehow he managed to get the track concession stands to give us all their food since the track meet was rained out and we were still sitting in our dugout at the field.
Saturday was a long one (we didn't finish until after 8:00 p.m.) but we came out of it with two important conference wins and managed to keep one day open for this week where we have games every day of the week except for Wednesday and Sunday.
This Friday is when we play at Fifth Third Field in Dayton. Its going to be a fun game to watch so don't miss it!
April 4, 2011
The team is geared up and ready to play more than ever after a successful week. We took 3-of-4 games from AMC #3-preseason ranked Notre Dame this past weekend and prior to that we crushed Shawnee State who earlier in the year beat the University of Dayton. The “Cullinator” threw another gem on Friday against NDC improving his record to an impressive 5-0 and giving us our first conference win. Mike “Shelby” Roe pitched well in the second game but we didn't get going offensively until it was too late.
Saturday was the first time this year we've had a complete fence surrounding the outfield without a trace of the orange snow fence that Tyler Rost once despised. Rost disliked the fence because of the way it looked and because it hindered him from catching a fly ball that wouldn't normally have been a home run (he ran through the fence and broke it anyway).
Although we have a fence it wasn't enough to contain the bat of our powerful, powerful first baseman Nate Davenport. He hit two home run balls foul and one fair. One of Nate's foul balls sailed into the parking lot along the left field line hitting the windshield of his father’s car! Also, throughout our conference double header Saturday we experienced cloudiness, sunshine, rain, ice and snow! Despite the odd weather patterns we were able to sweep Notre Dame behind the solid pitching of T.J. Taylor and David Ledbetter.
We are really excited about our team and the guys are beginning to realize how good we really are this year. We are looking forward to the rest of the season and hope that fans will come out to support us more and more!
If you haven't yet got your tickets to our game against NCAA Division II Urbana at Fifth Third Field in Dayton you need to get them quick! It's going to be a great game at a beautiful baseball field on Friday, April 15. Come out and watch!
March 28, 2011
Every year we have a week like we had last week where it is unbelievably cold. Two weeks ago it was 60 degrees and sunny, an easy adjustment from Florida, and then Ohio decided to remind us where we were. In one of our games against Miami-Middletown it snowed pretty hard although there was no wind so it was bearable. The next day in our doubleheader against UC-Clermont it was brutally cold. The temperature was around 28 degrees with a relentless wind. The difficult thing about weather and baseball is you really can’t run around to stay warm. When you play a position in the field you just have to stand there and take it.
On top of it being very cold on Saturday against UC-Clermont, our first game went 11 innings! Thankfully we ended up winning and in the next game we were able to beat them easily in seven innings behind the strong pitching of David Ledbetter and his makeshift beard to keep his face warm (Facebook pictures will explain). Saturday was a long day on the baseball field but it helped that we came out on top.
Also on a positive note our outfield fence is nearing completion. At first we weren’t sure what was going on because they actually started taking boards down over the weekend but they eventually put them back up and our field is almost entirely closed in. Hopefully the fence will be done by this Saturday when we have our first conference game at home!
March 21, 2011
Since getting back to Ohio we have stayed pretty busy. This past week we went 5-1 and played very well. We seemed to lose a little bit of energy this week but that be attributed to coming back to the reality of homework and class along with the lack of Florida sunshine. Although, playing at Prasco Park and beating No. 23 ranked Taylor University certainly helped lift our spirits this week.
On Thursday we had the privilege of playing at Legacy Field at Prasco Park. They treated us so well and I’m pretty sure everyone on the team would be ok traveling an hour for home games if they were all played there! They have amazing facilities! When we arrived to the field they had a basket full of snacks and a cooler full of Gatorade for us sitting in the dugout. After playing on a beautiful field they had Chick-fil-A sandwiches waiting for us behind the dugout for our post-game meal! The people at Prasco are really special and Cedarville Baseball is certainly thankful to have them as friends. We are very grateful for their hospitality and generosity.
On Friday and Saturday we played games at Wright State’s Nischwitz Stadium. They also have a nice field and it was a blessing to be able to play there while our home field’s fence is being finished.
Hopefully this coming week we can play some of our home games on our home field especially with conference play approaching. We have games on Tuesday (Shawnee State), Thursday (Northern Kentucky), Friday (Miami-Middletown) and Saturday (Cincinnati-Clermont).
Come out and watch!
March 14, 2011
It seems like yesterday we were rushing from the Tampa airport in three white 15 passenger vans to our first Florida practice at Indian Rocks Christian School. It was in the high 70's that first day and we practiced in t-shirts and shorts. Our first sunny practice in Florida started us off on a high that carried us throughout the week as we played 11 games in 10 days. Only one of those 10 days were chilly and by chilly I mean 60 degrees with a slight breeze.
Atlanta airport employees and customers alike enjoyed front row seats to Cedarville baseball's “Airport Olympics.” The main and only event involved a racquet ball flying around and 10-15 guys in wheelchairs swarming an open area between several gates. It was all fun and games until someone (J.P. Perry) tried to pull a wheelie and landed on the back of his head … then it was hilarious! After putting on a show for fans from around the country we had to board our plan back to the cold and windy Ohio.
The Florida sun will surely be missed but we are ready to go to work on the baseball field back home after a successful campaign in Florida. We are coming back to Ohio with an 8-3 record - going 4-3 against very good NCAA II teams. We pitched well and as a team and we hit very, very well. In one of our losses we actually had 17 hits!
Defensively we struggled at times but for our first week playing games outside that is to be expected and it won't be an issue as the season progresses. We have the talent and chemistry on this team necessary to win our conference and make a run in the NAIA tournament. Our upperclassmen are very experienced and we have some talented newcomers. In fact, on Saturday in the first game of our double header against Lock Haven University, innocent freshman “Lamby Cammy” had a game-winning double! We affectionately call Cameron McWilliams “Lamby Cammy” or “Lamb Chops” because during a game he once called out for a fly ball bleating like a lamb.
We are looking forward to playing some games at home. Come out and watch!
March 7, 2011
Cedarville baseball is the most fun it’s been in my three years here. The team is full of energy and the Ledbetters are absolutely crazy. If anyone reading this doesn’t like baseball they should at least come out to a game to experience the “Ledbetter Lunacy.” Last night we went to Mugs for dinner and the team all sang “Don’t Stop Believing” by Journey. Hembekides and Montgomery showed off their musical talents as well singing “I Want it that Way” by the Backstreet Boys.
Besides a rowdy bunch of teammates, we are also off to a great start with a 5-0 record. Today we just beat Lock Haven University 9-8. They are a solid NCAA Division II team and it was a good win for us. During the game Chris Ward fouled a ball of his shin and has a deep bone bruise and damaged patella nerve. He will be out of action for a little while so keep him in your prayers.
On a positive note David Ledbetter threw a pen today and his recovery from ACL surgery is coming along really well. He is scheduled to throw March 17th if rehab continues to go well. David will be a big part of the success of our pitching staff.
We are enjoying the sun here in Florida and the weather has been great. It’s been fun playing in the sunshine and spending time with teammates and family.
February 28, 2011
Waking up at 4:45 a .m. is rarely fun. One could even make a pretty good argument that there isn’t a situation where being awake at 4:45 a.m. is fun but, thankfully we have only had two practices a week where we had to wake up that early to be ready for a 5:15 a.m. practice. I speak for all the returning players when I say that we are very grateful to coach and the academic advisors that worked with us to make practicing in the afternoon a possibility. It’s much easier to focus on a ball traveling at 85+ mph in the afternoon than it is that early in the morning. If you don’t believe me ask Chris Ward, he wasn’t able to focus to his full capacity one morning and consequently he wasn’t able to get out of the way of my fastball traveling towards his head. He had a minor concussion that put him out for half of the Florida trip last year, but no worries; he is injury free this preseason and I haven’t hit anyone in the head … yet.
During the winter we acquired two new teammates in Cullin “Cullinator” Montgomery and Michael “Shelby” Roe. They are two great guys who will make solid contributions to the team spiritually and on the field. They fit with the team well and they will make an immediate impact this season as they are both starting pitchers who will likely start in conference games. Also, during the off season we acquired a new chaplain. The legendary Coach Don Callan will be leading our team devotions on game days. I had the privilege of going on a mission trip with Coach Callan this past summer to the Philippines and it emboldened me to see a spiritual giant like him act out his faith on a daily basis.
We have been consistently meeting for Bible study this year and that has really been a blessing. It’s given us a chance to bond as a team talking about issues we all deal with and praying for one another. Also Monday, Feb. 28 several guys on the team helped lead worship at the Athlete Worship Night. The Cullinator was on bass, Ryan Ledbetter playedlead guitar and David Ledbetter was rockin’ out on the drums.
This preseason has been great, probably one of the best we’ve had since I’ve been here, but we are looking forward to heading down to Florida on Wednesday to begin our season. We’ve taken plenty of swings, fielded countless ground balls and laughed hysterically on several occasions. In one instance Coach K single handedly caused an outbreak of laughter for a good five to ten minutes during batting practice after Ty Rost hit a ball back at the screen causing Coach K to stumble backwards a few feet until he finally landed flat on his back. Coach Manes had to walk away because he couldn’t stop laughing!
All in all we are pumped up for a great season and looking forward to making a run in the NAIA tournament. We would appreciate your prayers while we are in Florida and as we play throughout the season!
Andrew York, a senior pitcher/infielder from Mars Hill, Maine, is in his third season with the Yellow Jackets. He is a Dean's List student as a business finance major at Cedarville University, who batted .366 in 39 games last spring.
