Cambridge Christian baseball coach Rick Shears couldn’t have been more pleased with his team’s performance last week in the Dominican Republic, especially with his team’s work on the field.

Shears watched his team post a 6-1-1 record against some very talented Dominican teams during the Lancers’ weeklong trip to the Dominican Republic through SCORE International, an organization that for the past 23 years has taken players overseas on short-term mission trips.

“On the diamond, of course, I thought we played excellent,” Shears said. “We just played some fantastic ball.”

One thing Shears was hoping to find during the week were some players who were ready to step up and assume leadership roles for next season, a necessity after the Lancers lost four senior starters from last season’s Class 1A state runner-up squad – Michael Miller, Erik Shears, Will Bakos and Taylor Cabral – who filled the role tremendously. Shears thinks he found a few players ready to step into that role in rising sophomore Andrew Widell and rising junior Logan McDougall.

“I think we found some leaders on the team,” Shears said of the two. “I was really happy with what they did.”

In case you missed it, Lancers players Joshua Hanna, Christopher Brown, Peter Miller, Bryan Rizzetta and McDougall took time to write daily diary entries for TBO.com about their experiences while on the trip in the Dominican Republic. You can find each one here: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5.