This year’s Landmark Baseball Championship is full of fairy tales.

Only one of them, however, can find a happy ending.

Top-seeded Wilkes is one weekend of play away from its first trip to the NCAA Division III Tournament in 18 years, having defied all expectations to enter the Landmark’s annual conference tournament as the top dog. 

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Four other teams are determined to end the Colonels’ charge this week, however, as Landmark Championship play begins Tuesday and caps off Sunday at Penn Medicine Park, home to the Atlantic League of Professional Baseball’s Lancaster Stormers. Whoever stands tall at the end of it all earns the Landmark’s automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament, some sweet hardware and a whole lot of celebrating.

Let’s have some fun, shall we?

Here’s a look ahead at the Landmark Conference Baseball Championship with all that you need to know for all five teams in the league left standing:

NOTE: All first pitch times are listed in Eastern Time.

No. 1 Wilkes

Record: 28-10 overall (19-5 Landmark)

First game: vs. No. 4 Catholic/No. 5 Lycoming winner, 2:30 p.m. Friday

The lowdown: From being ranked sixth in the Landmark’s preseason coaches’ poll to winning the regular-season conference championship, it’s been a dream season to date for the Colonels under second-year head coach Mike Guy as they clinched their first top seed in a conference tournament since 1994, when Wilkes was then a member of the Middle Atlantic Conference. Two Colonels victories at the Landmark Championship will mean a new single-season program record for wins in a season, and Wilkes has an ability to get hot (such when it had a 12-game midseason winning streak this spring) and ride a wave of momentum all the way toward what could be a first NCAA Tournament trip since 2007.

Impact player: AJ Levandoski, LHP

Don’t let Levandoski’s lack of college experience as a true freshman fool you, as the Colonels’ ace has already proven himself to be a bonafide superstar in the Landmark during his stellar first collegiate season on the mound. Holding a perfect 8-0 record with a 3.02 ERA across 10 starts, Levandoski has struck out 57 batters in 56⅔ innings, allowed just one home run all year and holds his opponents to a .216 batting average when he’s in the circle. In fact, in the eight Landmark games that Levandoski appeared in this spring, the Colonels won all eight, with his dominant complete-game masterpiece against Juniata on April 5 — in which he didn’t allow an earned run and fanned 10 batters — being his best and brightest moment.

No. 2 Elizabethtown

Record: 27-11 (19-5 Landmark)

First game: vs. No. 3 Scranton, 11 a.m. Friday

The lowdown: The Blue Jays started Landmark play 2-5, being swept by Wilkes in the process on the opening weekend of conference competition in what turned out to be a crucial series for the regular-season title race. Then ETown proceeded to win 14 Landmark games in a row, finish as the league’s top hitting (.319) and pitching (4.31) team and just miss out on pulling off an improbable comeback for the No. 1 seed. Simply put, you do not want to be drawn to the Blue Jays in the bracket right now; in their final Landmark series of the regular season against Drew, ETown peppered the Rangers for 45 runs in three games, and the Blue Jays also had marquee wins in nonconference play — such as by beating then-No. 5 Misericordia on March 3 — to go with it.

Impact player: AJ Lipscomb, 1B/RHP

There’s something about freshman fireballers named AJ who are dominating the Landmark Conference baseball scene right now. For the Blue Jays’ AJ, he shifts responsibilities for ETown on the mound as he’s made five starts in 10 appearances this season, but no matter when he’s been called to action, he’s been dominant. Lipscomb holds the second-lowest ERA in all of D-III as of this writing at just 1.17 across 46⅓ innings pitched, allowing just six earned runs all year while striking out 41 and walking just 14. What especially boosts his stock, however, is that he can also rake at the plate as a two-way weapon with a .391 average and nine RBIs in 46 at-bats, making him one of the Landmark’s most entertaining players to watch.

No. 3 Scranton

Record: 20-18 (15-9 Landmark)

First game: vs. No. 2 Elizabethtown, 11 a.m. Friday

The lowdown: Scranton wasn’t able to defend its 2024 Landmark regular-season title, but a fourth consecutive 20-win season is nothing to sneeze at as the Royals try to pull off a different repeat this week — as in, a second straight Landmark Championship win and back-to-back NCAA Tournament appearances for the first time ever. Not ranked in the NCAA’s latest Region V poll, Scranton probably can’t make it back to the Regionals with an at-large selection, meaning that it will need to find some late-season magic this weekend. A .310 team batting average in the regular season, which was the second-best mark in the Landmark, should help the Royals find a potential groove, like when they won their regular-season series over Elizabethtown in late March and scored 33 runs in three games on the Blue Jays.

Impact player: John Heitzman, OF

An ex-Division I player is always a coveted asset for a D-III program to have, and the Royals should rightfully feel as if they hit the jackpot with Heitzman. The Connecticut native played a year with Quinnipiac in 2023 before dropping down to D-III and finding his way to Scranton, where all he’s done since landing in the Landmark is rake. He enters the Landmark Championship as the conference’s regular-season RBIs champion with 46, pairing it with a .345 average, 12 doubles, five triples and 10 stolen bases for good measure. Heitzman also has a reputation of being likely the Landmark’s hardest player to strike out, having only been sat down on strikes seven times in 148 at-bats this spring as he is patient with his pitches and waits for the right moment to strike time and time again.

No. 4 Catholic

Record: 23-16 (14-10 Landmark)

First game: vs. No. 5 Lycoming, 1:30 p.m. Tuesday

The lowdown: Picked to win the Landmark before the season, the Cardinals (who tied for the Landmark lead in home runs with 32) will now need to win conference hardware by way of capturing the league tournament title after some slip-ups in midseason, though they did sweep first-round opponent Lycoming and Drew in back-to-back series to restore some confidence going into the postseason. The added benefit of playing a brutal nonconference schedule that featured six games against teams ranked 16th or better in a national poll should help Catholic, especially considering that the Cardinals won two of those matchups — first against No. 11 Kean on March 11, then against No. 6 Salisbury on April 16.

Impact player: Cody Bosak, RHP

Catholic’s sluggers can bring the juice on any given night, but Bosak appearing on the mound helps to give the Cardinals an additional layer of stability. First making noise during his junior season in 2024 when he tossed a 1.84 ERA in 49 innings pitched, Bosak has kept his strong stuff going for his senior year with an increased workload, holding a perfect 5-0 record across 10 starts with a 2.88 ERA in 59⅓ frames this time around. None of his outings this season have gone fewer than 4⅔ innings as he’s usually bound for 5-7 frame of solid work in the circle whenever it’s his night to start; six-inning, three-hit starts in back-to-back games against Coast Guard and Moravian earlier this year only drove the point home that Bosak is a consistent, collected arm the Cardinals can rely on.

No. 5 Lycoming

Record: 21-19 (12-12 Landmark)

First game: at No. 4 Catholic, 1:30 p.m. Tuesday

The lowdown: Having guaranteed the accomplishment of finishing the season with a winning record for the first time in 45 years — with the caveat that Lycoming didn’t have a baseball team from 1972-2022 — the Warriors are loving life in their best season since the program was revived in 2023. Picked to finish last in the Landmark in the preseason, Lycoming has instead more than doubled its win total from the 2024 campaign and deservingly qualified for postseason baseball for the first time in school history. Solid all-around with power (28 home runs, third in the conference), pitching (5.28 ERA, fourth in the conference) and defense (.969 fielding percentage, first in the conference), the Warriors’ Cinderella story could have a few more pages left to write this spring if they start to get on a roll.

Impact player: Brody Lindsey, INF

The Landmark’s regular-season home run king with 11 long bombs, Lindsey, in his first season of D-III ball since transferring in the offseason from junior college, is having benchmark games for the Lycoming program and helping to set the standard for how high the Warriors can reach on the diamond. His two-homer game against Marymount (Virginia) on Feb. 23 was Lycoming’s first since the program was reinstated, and his .318 average this season shows that he can get on base with solid contact, too. The junior can also get on hot streaks that make him difficult to slow down; in a two-game stretch against nonconference opponent King’s (Pennsylvania) and Landmark foe Juniata back in mid-March, he had a combined nine RBIs with five hits, including a grand slam.

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