Constructing a championship caliber team is a lot like building a house. It requires a strong foundation based on the tenets of strong coaching, experience, and leadership. After the foundation you need to add other necessities, such as windows, plumbing, and electricity, or, in terms of team building, role players, depth, and athletes. However, just as there is no one formula to building the ideal house, there is no perfect recipe for a championship team. This unique formula is what the Southern Lehigh baseball team is trying to concoct as they prepare to make a championship run, despite some clear holes left behind after the graduation of many of last year’s players.

In the 2016 baseball season, the Spartans yielded an 11-6 record and were knocked out in the second round of the Colonial League tournament by the eventual champs, Bangor. During the District XI playoffs, the Spartans won their first game against Palisades by a score of 9-2, but they would go on to face a 6-4 loss handed to them by a Lehighton team that was peaking at the right moment, after having just upset the number one seeded Northwestern Tigers. However, what happened after the final out of the 2016 baseball season was called is what would change the course of the 2017 season for Southern Lehigh.

Last June, the team graduated all but three of its full time starters, including second team all Colonial League outfielder Dylan Niedbalski and ace pitcher Jacob Cassel. Due to attrition, the Spartans have lost one of the key pieces to a successful team: experience. Returning to the lineup the from last year’s varsity team are junior catcher Niko Amory, senior pitcher Connor Murtaugh, senior outfielder Timmy Walter, and senior first baseman Michael Miller.

In building their own formula for success, something has to take the place of experience. For the 2017 Spartan baseball team, one of their key pieces is depth.

“The pitching staff is deep, and our offense, we can hit one through nine,” Amory said. “So we should be all around good as a result of that.”

While the primary depth of this team lies in the pitching staff, the Spartans are still a very young bullpen, with Murtaugh expected to lead the way for the young pitchers. Behind Murtaugh are mostly sophomores and freshmen, many of whom have never pitched at the varsity level.

One of the more experienced pitchers who will be expected to increase his workload is sophomore Dalton Musselman, who pitched sparingly last year due to the experience in front of him. The youthful Spartan will look to fill the void left last year by the departure of John Hendricks, Derek Barnes, and southpaw Jacob Cassel.

“We took [the pitchers] early on in the summer just to get them used to things and start showing them the program. How the pitches operate and what they do and stuff like that,” Murtaugh said. “But the only real thing we can do is get them out there in a few actual varsity games, just because there’s nothing else that can really prepare you for that unless you live it.”

“I think we’ve made a good start,” Musselman said. “The youth is really going to help us this year in the pitching staff, especially later in the season, so I think we should be fine.”

Leadership is where the Spartans stick to the traditional ideals of building a championship caliber team. The few upperclassmen play a huge role in preparing the younger players and setting them up for success.

“We have some good senior leaders that should help us and we have better leadership this year than in the last two years,” Amory said.

The role that the senior leaders play is multiplied tenfold because of the need to get a group of young players with no varsity experience, who have sometimes have never even played together, up to speed to play at high level by opening day.

“We have Timmy Walter on the team so he leads more vocally, I try to lead by example,” Murtaugh said, “so I just try to show the young guys what it’s like to pitch at the varsity level for the first time because a lot of them haven’t been there before.”

Despite the roster turnover and question marks that come with starting a largely inexperienced team, the Spartans have still managed to set themselves up for success and believe that this team can make a deep playoff run potentially extending all the way to a Colonial League  and District XI title.

The 2017 Southern Lehigh baseball team will not be traditional. They can’t be if they hope to compete with the senior-laden powerhouses of Colonial League baseball. But if you ask Frank Lloyd Wright, he would tell you that it’s okay to go away from what is expected in order to get the job done. While it won’t work for everybody, the Spartans believe that they have found a formula for success.

“I expect us to finish out on top,” Murtaugh said, “Even though we are a young team, I feel like, as opposed to maybe Bangor, there’s not another team talent wise that can touch what we have.”