COLONY — Roland Weir and his Crest Lancer baseball bunch are happy, but hardly satisfied.
The Lancers capped a perfect regular season — the only team in the state at any level to do so — with a sweep of Three Rivers League rival Jayhawk-Linn, 14-4 and 9-2.
“The kids are stepping up this time of year,” Weir said. “I’m proud of all of them. We’ve got guys working off the bench, playing hard. They know our goals. We wanted to win league. We want to win our regional. We want state. We got there last year, and it ended with a bad taste in our mouths.”
Crest’s early exit at last year’s Class 2-1A State Tournament has fueled the team in the 12 months since, said Tucker Yocham, one of only two seniors on the Crest roster.
“Every single day, we’ve thought of that,” Yocham said. “Every day at practice, we worked, so we would not be beaten out. Our goal is to go 6-0 from here on out.”
Crest opens regional play as the top seed in the 2-1A regional, and will travel to Richmond at 3 p.m. Monday to take on Marais Des Cygnes Valley.
Potential showdowns include Southern Lyon County (16-2), Lebo Waverly (13-5) and even these same Jayhawks (14-6).
But Yocham has zero interest in focusing on anyone other than Marais Des Cygnes Valley, offering up a history lesson: all the way back to May 2021.
“Last year, there were two undefeated teams going into playoffs, and they lost in the first round of regionals,” Yocham said. “We don’t want to be that team everyone else is laughing at.”
With hitting performances like Thursday’s there likely won’t be much laughing from Lancer opponents.
Crest juniors Holden Barker and Stetson Setter set the tone for the night with back-to-back home runs — Barker’s was a three-run shot — to push Crest ahead 4-0 in the bottom of the first.
Setter continued the fun in the second inning with his second long ball of the game, a three-run blast, to make it 7-0.
Rogan Weir got into the act with a solo home run to start the third.
Some wobbly defense, a pair of seeing-eye singles and a perfectly placed bunt allowed the Jayhawks to get back into the game with a four-run fourth, but that only delayed the inevitable.
Kaden Nilges went deep to lead off Crest’s fifth inning, Barker followed with an RBI to make it 11-4 and Crest ended it an inning later with RBI singles from Jack White and Nilges and a bases-loaded hit-by-pitch by Church.
Setter’s 3-for-4 day included a pair of home runs and four RBIs. Barker went 2-for-4 with a home run, double and four more RBIs. Nilges and Weir each had a single and a home run. White singled twice, while Avery Blaufuss and Ryan Golden doubled. Trevor Church struck out 13 over six innings, allowing five hits.
