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FIVE IMPACT SENIORS GRADUATED FROM LAST YEAR’S ONE-LOSS TEAM, including the right-hander Harold Cortijo, the most impactful of all.

The Yankees selected Cortijo in the 14^th round of the 2017 MLB June Amateur Draft after he went 11-0 with a 0.55 ERA with 86 strikeouts in 63 1/3 innings during his senior season at RBS. He also played a position when he wasn’t pitching and hit .537 (58-for-108) with 16 extra-base hits (4 HRs), 33 RBI, 53 runs and 17 stolen bases.

The Crusaders will miss the departed graduates and the community will never forget a game-changing player like Cortijo, but with eight returning seniors back in the fold after productive junior campaigns, the amount of preseason attention this team is receiving seems warranted.

“I think every year coming in, you look at each club a little differently and what their strengths and weaknesses are,” Terrill said. “From a position-player standpoint, we lost some really good young men to college and one to the draft, but the group that we have now is going to compete at a high level each day defensively; I think offensively our lineup has a chance to be a little bit stronger and faster than it was last year.”

Perfect Game has four of the eight key seniors positioned in the top-500 in the class of 2018 national prospect rankings, and a fifth is ranked as a top-1,000; all five are ranked in the top-35 among Maryland’s most highly regarded 2018 prospects.

The top-500s are third baseman/right-hander Jose Rivera (No. 19 Maryland, Gulf Coast State College signee), shortstop Darius Gilliam (No. 24, Southern U.), outfielder Corey Rosier (No. 27, Chipola College) and middle-infielder Ben Blackwell (No. 50 in Virginia, Dayton).

The top-1,000 prospect is first baseman Marcus Brown (No. 35, Maryland Eastern Shore); there is also “high follow” outfielder Matthew Day (Coppin State), shortstop Chrystian Mervilas (Grambling State) and right-hander Seth White (Salisbury U.). Gilliam and Brown are new to the program this year, as is sophomore infielder Jordan Peyton (Nos. 478/14 Va. class of 2020, Radford).

Five of the top prospects back for their senior seasons in 2018 played in at least 30 of the Crusaders’ 31 games last year, and Blackwell, Rivera and Rosier played in all 31. Rivera and Rosier were monsters at the plate with Rivera hitting .541-10-68 – all team-highs – and Rosier chipping in at .495-3-35. Rivera also had a team-high 13 doubles with Rosier right behind with 12; the right-hander White was 6-1 with a 1.18 ERA in 16 appearances – four starts – last season.

“What I like about this group is the camaraderie that I’ve seen from them,” Terrill said. “I think they understand the value of truly getting along and becoming a unit together, because in the face of competition – and even in the face of life – how you treat people matters more than anything, and the guys have bought into that.

“I think it’s going to pay big dividends late in games, and while that doesn’t mean we’re going to win them all, I think the cohesiveness of this team has a chance to truly give us a shot each and every day.”

Over the years, Riverdale Baptist has become attractive to a certain type of player and athlete that loves to run the bases, run them quickly and run them safely.

Terrill told PG he could put as many as seven players in this season’s starting lineup who run the 60-yard dash in 6.8-seconds or better, and while that doesn’t always translate into being a great baserunner, recent Crusader lineups have done a good job of making it so.

Stealing bases became their calling card during the Terry Terrill era, and his son has only accelerated the pace. They swiped an astounding 519 bases in 102 games over the last three seasons – 180 in ’15, 186 in ’16 and 153 in ’17 – an average of more than five per game. The team leaders a year ago were Rivera (35), Blackwell (24) and Rosier, and, as noted, they’re all back.

“We practice at a high clip,” Terrill said. “Each day we start getting dirty and we have catchers throwing behind in our drills and our guys understand as they fail in practice it’s going to benefit them moving forward. They buy into it and we preach it daily, knowing that how we run the bases … is going to impact the team. It may just look like a good stat on the individual but in the end our team is going to be better for it.”

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RIVERDALE BAPTIST RECENTLY COMPLETED THE THIRD WEEK OF ITS BASEBALL youth camp in Upper Marlboro, and Terrill reported they had 51 youngsters show up from throughout the state. He said he was especially proud of how his players interacted with the youngsters, and he had parents approach him and ask if their young sons could adopt the older players as big brothers during the season.

“I thought that spoke volumes about people getting interested in what we’re doing,” Terrill said. “Anytime you treat people well it gives you an opportunity to leave a long-lasting impact, whether they come to Riverdale as a student or whether they go to the local public school and then come out as a supportive fan.”

It is not uncommon for the program’s alumni to return from college and join the present team at practice sessions, and that leaves a big impression on the high school players. It gives them a sense of tradition and an appreciation for the type of young men that came before them and what they’ve moved onto.

The coaches take the team through what Terrill called a “Tradition Walk” before the start of each new season and talk to the players about some of the players that preceded them and the high standards they held themselves to. Terrill believes that gives the young players a “humble perspective” and helps them understand they’re a small piece of the program’s history and tradition.

“This is a bunch of really good guys who have bought into something bigger than the game of baseball,” he said of this year’s group. “They understand that their careers are going to end at some point but the relationships they build and the kind of teammate and young men that they are is going to leave a long-lasting impact. …

“Our young men truly understand that their value isn’t based on winning games but on the effort they give and the attitude they show up with. We just hope to represent with a level of class that leaves a good taste in everybody’s mouth.”

The Riverdale Baptist HS program enjoys tremendous support from the community at large and from its student body. There are still a lot of alumni living in the area, and they’re supportive as well.

Upper Marlboro sits about 20 miles southeast of downtown DC and about 40 miles south of Baltimore, and the entire, vast metropolitan area is filled with terrific high school baseball programs and inhabited with the alumni of those schools.

“The support we receive is a testament to the quality of baseball in the area, and it’s not just us,” Terrill said. “There is a bevy of great coaches and great programs around here and we’re just happy to be one of them.”

Not only one of them, but one of the best of them. The Crusader coaches and players may not judge a team’s success by how the scoreboard reads at the end of the game but, hey, everyone wants to win. With that in mind, Terrill said a team goal every year is to win 30 games, a pretty high number considering Riverdale Baptist typically plays around 35 games in a season.

That goal has been even more difficult to reach because the Crusaders have almost become victims of their own success. After winning 95 games over the last three years, Terrill has found himself fielding calls from coaches all around the area who want to test their team against his team.

That usually means that once a date is set, the Crusaders are more likely than not to see said-team’s No. 1 or No. 2 starter, a challenge the RBS players eagerly embrace. It’s all about doing their part to keep Riverdale Baptist’s winning tradition alive and well while backing down from no one.

Terry Terrill, who still serves as the athletic director at Riverdale Baptist and takes up residence in the first-base coach’s box during Crusader games, is Maryland’s all-time winningest baseball coach; he also enjoyed a fine collegiate career at High Point University.

Ryan Terrill played some juco ball and then two seasons at Liberty University. Based on their own experiences, both Terrills take a lot of pride watching their former Riverdale players move on to play at the collegiate level and, as has been the case for almost two dozen of the program’s alumni, get drafted into professional ball.

“I’ve been fortunate to learn from what I deem one of the greatest mentors I’ve ever had, I just ended up growing up in the same household as him,” Ryan Terrill concluded. “As the kids earn it and work for it, we want them to get every opportunity they deserve, and as they leave our program I think what happens is they just have a tremendous sense of pride for Riverdale.”