Crusaders Reloaded For Title Run

Coral Springs Christian has gained respect as one of the top small-school programs in the county over the past few years.

It’s that favorable viewpoint throughout the baseball community that has allowed the Crusaders to bolster a team that saw the departure of eight seniors, including several of the top players in the program.

Exit senior leaders Ryan Cabreja, Zach Butler, Nick Lamberti, Billy Atkins, and Ryan Milner. Enter transfers Benito Santiago, Devin Meyer, Colin Taylor and Abraham Alejandro.

“Thankfully based on the reputation of our program, some people are wanting to come to our school. The school has become a place where student athletes can come, and they feel they’re going to get good academics and get good coaching and improve,” Crusaders coach Matt Cleveland said. “Really, what I did, I didn’t do much. There’s kids that want to come and play and we were blessed to get some good players again this year. We have a good group of freshman and sophomores, but some of them will be sprinkled in. We would have been competitive either way, but now we have a chance to be pretty darn good.”

Losing Butler to graduation as catcher was tough as the team found itself with a big void to fill, but fortunately for the Crusaders, former Flanagan player Benito Santiago joined the team and will start this spring.

“I’m lucky to come over to a great coach, a great program and a great school,” he said. “Here it’s all about working hard, training hard, not taking reps off, not taking a day off.”

Santiago said he has found camaraderie at Coral Springs Christian.

“It’s a tight family. We all push ourselves,” he said. “Everything is like a family every time we come out. We pray before the game and we have great momentum every time we go out. We always have each others back.”

The Crusaders solidified the top of their rotation when they acquired Devin Meyer from Taravella. Meyer, “a legit high school number one” who throws in the mid to upper 80s, has “a very good curveball, good knuckle, a split and change-up,” Cleveland said. Meyer throws four pitches for strikes.

Meyer joins Touki Toussaint as a formidable 1-2 punch to lead the staff.

“Everybody knows [Toussaint’s] a top-of-the-line arm, and so’s Devin,” Cleveland said.

Toussaint, a junior right-hander with a low 90s fastball who went 5-0 with 42 strikeouts and a 1.01 ERA last year, will play shortstop when he isn’t pitching. He also produced at the plate with a .481 average and 22 RBI. Cleveland will be counting on him to be a leader as well.

“He’s a great kid, he’s a great teammate, he works his butt off. He doesn’t have a cocky bone in his whole body,” Cleveland said. “I can’t say enough about him and how he came last year. He had a great year. He had a tremendous year. I don’t even expect him to necessarily replicate what he did with the bat again because I don’t know how many pitches he’ll see. Last year, we kept his innings down because he was a big prospect, and this year, he’s going start one game a week. I’m just blessed to have good infielders who can play out there when he pitches, and if he needs a day of rest and he needs to DH or maybe play the outfield to rest his arm, we can do that and not suffer at all.”

BrowardHighSchoolBaseball.com caught up with Toussaint, who has verbally committed to the University of Miami, as he was in California training with the Atlanta Blue Jays Baseball Club travel program. Toussaint said he’s having fun playing the sport he loves and isn’t letting the pressure of being a top prospect get to him. Back at Coral Springs Christian, his role will be to lead, he said.

“I’m trying to keep our program the way its supposed to be and showing the new kids how things are,” he said. “We just have to mesh together.”

Behind Toussaint and Meyer are five solid arms, including Taylor, who came over from Coral Springs. He throws three pitches for strikes with a low 80s fastball.

“He’s a strike-thrower, a lot like (Billy) Atkins with his mound presence,” Cleveland said. “He plays first, plays third, a great team kid.”

Brandon Rodrigues, a lefty senior who pitched some last year, has an opportunity to get in the rotation, and senior Cody Ross and sophomores Junior Fernandez and Ricky Miranda round out the staff.

One of Meyer’s teammates at Taravella, Joseph DePalo also has transferred to Springs Christian and is a “great bat, great outfielder good arm and great outfielder,” according to Cleveland.

James Buckley comes over from Monarch to help the Crusaders “sure up the middle infield” when Toussaint pitches.

“He’s going to be a great middle infielder along with some younger guys, too,” Cleveland said.

Alejandro, who hit .365 and drove in 19 runs to go with 13 stolen bases, will bolster the team as will Alvi James from Panama, who Cleveland said is draftable.

“We’ve added a lot of guys. If they learn how to play the game the right way, it could be our best team,” Cleveland said. “I’m excited. We lost bats, but I think we’re going to hit more this year. We’ve got some sticks this year, so that’s exciting for me, too.”

Cleveland said its both a blessing and a curse that his program has a limited number of players. This allows for more one-on-one coaching, but it makes it tough to stick to the team’s fall plan of having pitchers throw no more than 45 pitches, using three hurlers per game.

“They throw once a week. We try to play during the week so if they want to go to a showcase, they can go because that’s important,” Cleveland said. “They need to get out and get seen. There’s not a lot of college guys out at these high school games. So if that’s a week they’re going, we’ll set up their pitching so they’re ready for that weekend. This is less important than that.”

Getting everyone in the game is priority for the fall as well.

“We play everybody, but we only have 22 high schoolers,” Cleveland said. “It’s a catch 22. I wish I had more guys, but it’s great because the guys that play get a lot of work and a lot of time. So we just want to keep their pitches down and get them better and not do too much situational bunt and hit and run. We want them to swing the bat and see what we got because legitimately we have 20 guys who can play on varsity and we can’t start 20 guys. So you have to see what you have in the fall.”

Looking ahead to the spring, Cleveland is counting on more battles within the district as any team can beat another on any given day.

“We won three [district titles] in a row, and we had unbelievable district tournaments each year,” he said. “We feel not lucky, but we feel blessed to come out on top the past couple of years. And this year’s going to be no different. Every coach in our district is very good. Their kids want to play for them. They’re well-coached. Nobody rolls over ever. None of our teams have been nationally ranked or have been huge teams yet, but every game is nail-biting. We just want to go out and play each team twice and compete and try to learn from them and learn from our mistakes. But it’s a round ball and a round bat, so can only control what you can control. So I’m sure in April, it’ll be the same thing again.”

The Crusaders will play against district nemesis Calvary Christian in a BHSB Saturday Game of the Week this spring on March 16th. Cleveland said he’s honored to have his team selected to play in one of those spotlight matchups.

“You know, 10 years ago small schools weren’t even mentioned baseball-wise, and I think with the help of our district and when coach [Rich] Hofman was at Westminster, we feel we can play with anybody in the county. We’ll play anybody. There may be some teams that are better, but I think the recognition is great for the smaller private schools, and us and Calvary it’s always a battle, so it’ll be a lot of fun.”

Hopefully the Crusaders won’t be mired in a funk as they sometimes can be during the early to mid part of the season. Cleveland is OK with his team taking its lumps early or learning from mistakes, as long as all that translates into wins when it counts at the end of the season. Springs Christian went 6-2 last year before a 2-3-1 stretch in the middle part of the season. The team ended the season winning eight of nine for a final record of 19-8-1 overall and 5-3 in District 3A-14.

“My philosophy is I don’t want to cheat the game, Cleveland said. “I want them to learn to be successful. If we’ve got a runner on third with less than two outs, I don’t want to take the bat our of anybody’s hands in my lineup. So early in the year, I want them to feel I trust them. I give them opportunities. I don’t want to start off every year 5-5, but we play tough schedules. We always go down to Miami at the beginning of the year because those games are tough, the crowds are big and you don’t get a lot of calls. What I tell them is when we start in January is we’re going to get better today, we’re going to get better tomorrow and if we keep getting better, we’ll be peaking at the end of April and the beginning of May.”

Cleveland hopes his team will be solid enough at the end so it can make it past the regional quarterfinal. Springs Christian is 0-3 in its attempts the past three seasons. The Crusaders ended last year losing 6-2 in eight innings to Summit Christian.

“Our region I think is the hardest region in the state in any class,” Cleveland said. “There are seven ridiculously good teams in our region. I don’t what the answer is. All we can do is work hard and just hope to play well in that game.”

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