Baseball: Leesburg Christian Captures Third Straight State Championship

Leesburg (May 18, 2010) - In a day when "back-to-backs" and "three-peats" are rare, the Leesburg Christian School varsity baseball team brought home an unprecedented third straight Old Dominion Association of Christian Schools State Championship.

The Lions started this year's ODACS Final Four -- which was was held on May 14 at Heritage Christian School in Woodbridge -- as the top seed and never looked back.

In the semi-final round on Friday morning, the Lions faced Keystone Christian School from Berryville -- a team that earlier in the season handed Leesburg Christian their first conference defeat in several years.

Eager for revenge, LCS came out strong in the first inning and sent their message, easily winning 20-3. Brothers Zachary and Nicholas Mathews joined forces on the mound to close out the victory, with Zachary starting the contest and Nicholas coming in for relief. The highlight of the game was an "inside the park" home run struck by the Lions' tournament MVP, senior Justin Matzker.

In the championship game on Friday afternoon, LCS faced a surprise opponent that upset the host school to earn their place in the final -- Faith Christian School from Fredericksburg.

Despite the fact that Faith had not beaten Leesburg during the regular season, the Conquerors held the Lions scoreless for the first couple of innings. But the Lions burst onto the scoreboard in the third inning with a number of big hits, including a smash by Matzker that cleared the 350-foot center field fence, landing midway up a clump of trees. From there, the Lions continued their domination for the remainder of the game, blanking the Conquerors 11-0.

The members of the Leesburg Christian School Lions varsity baseball team were Justin Matzker, Nicholas Mathews, Thomas Irwin, Dillon Paulovkin, Gabe Yokoe, Zachary Mathews, Matthew McKenzie, Graham Albright, Logan McCauley, Sam Ganis, Bradley Glausier, Andy Pugh, Elliot Rice, Kyle Williams, Isaac Workman, and Michael Ganis.

The past three championship baseball teams from LCS were coached by Warner Workman. He was assisted this year by Chris Ganis and Kerry Rice.