The Creswell baseball program featured a very young team a season ago, having no seniors on the roster and only four juniors giving a lot of underclassmen the time to log some quality playing time. This season under new head skipper Craig Leonard, the Bulldogs return looking to continue to grow from last year. 

“Last year we had a really young team,” said Head Coach Craig Leonard. “No seniors on the team last year and I think we started six or seven freshmen for most games last year. But this year coming back, still a really young team. We have basically, everybody that was on the team last year is back again this year with the addition of a bunch of new kids.”

On top of the players returning for Creswell, another aspect coach Leonard is excited to see is the substantial growth in numbers this season. 

“A lot of these guys I’ve coached since middle school baseball,” said Leonard. “So it’s great to see a lot of their growth there. And we have a ton of new kids, I think Creswell hasn’t had about a Junior Varsity team in four years. And hasn’t had a roster this big in at least 10 years from my understanding we got like 26-27 kids out. So just some excitement around the program.”

Despite not having success record-wise last season, the Bulldogs plan to use the last spring and summer season as building blocks for the season coming up.

“We’re going to take the experience that they gained last year and improve on it,” said Leonard. “So, it was kind of a rough spring season because they didn’t win a lot of games. The lack of experience and everything, but it really started coming together a little bit more during the summer season. So just kind of build on that growth. And I think we’ve got some good potential to come out and play some good baseball.

Creswell starts the season with a trio of home games with the first already have been played on Tuesday, March 15. Followed by a March 17 game against Elkton and March 18 matchup against Bandon.