We were in attendance for the East Coast Lumberjacks winter workout on Sunday at 365 Athletics. The organization, which began in 2015, has consistently been ranked among the top teams in the region.
Additionally, they have been successful in terms of getting their players committed to Division-I programs.
At Sunday’s practice, the group featured Marist-commit Marco Ali, who is one of the best middle infielders on Long Island. He will be a key piece for St. Anthony’s in the upcoming season. Additionally, Farleigh-Dickinson-commit T.J. Werner was in the building. He is the reigning League 7 MVP despite standing just 5’4. Some people found it hard to believe he was called up to varsity as a 9th grader. All he’s done is prove he belongs–he batted .375 with 25 stolen bases last season and won the Gold Glove for top defensive SS in Suffolk County.
T.J. Werner is the reigning League 7 MVP despite standing only 5’4. He batted .375 with 25 stolen bases for Mount Sinai and won the Gold Glove at the SS position. He is committed to Farleigh Dickinson. pic.twitter.com/CvVNh6VmYu
— Axcess Baseball LI (@axcessbaseball) January 12, 2020
Some other high-end players in their 2020 grad class are Boston College-commits Cameron Leary and Aidan Crowley, Hofstra-commit Cullen SantaMaria and Marist-commit Rob Copozzi.
The 2021 class already has Fordham-commit T.J. Wachter (The Stony Brook School) and Notre Dame-commit Roman Kimball (New Hartford).
I had a chance to speak with Ryan Pembroke, the founder of the organization and here’s what he had to say…
Can you tell us about why you began the organization and what you recall from that first year?
So when me and my brother, Daniel, decided to start the Lumberjacks in 2015 our first team was 2017 grad team. We wanted to push Long Island baseball players to compete against the nation’s best. Our first event we go to Diamond Nation in the Super 16 Invitational and we won it!
How has it grown since then?
We really jumped off from there. College coaches follow us and just really love our brand of baseball! We garnered 12 Division-I scholarships from that team, two Division-II scholarships, two Division-I JuCo scholarship players and also two Division-III JuCo. So from that point we slowly added a team per year with the mindset to play the toughest schedule on the national stage and focus on the grad year! For us it has really worked, we have a total of 82 college baseball players, 76 of which received baseball scholarships (53 Division-I). Our biggest thing was one team per age group. So we have had only a 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and two new teams in 2024 and 2025 grad yeas. Each year we have continued to get better. Our 2018 team had 17 Division-I baseball players and our 2020 team had 17 Division-I players. A lot of guys are getting opportunities to play in front of school that they didn’t expect to, but with our competitive schedule and reputation with the college coaches we have been very fortunate for those opportunities.
What are your goals for 2020?
As far as goals for 2020, it’s to continue to get better and showcase our guys and get them into schools and have the opportunity for our 2021 grad team to represent in Jupiter, so we are working very hard everyday on-and-off the field to achieve these goals. As a staff, we couldn’t be more proud of the young men we have but they know we have high expectations, so when it’s time to work it’s time to work!!
