Correspondent file photo / Robert Hayes. Canfield head coach Matt Weymer speaks to his team between innings during the Division IV regional semifinal vs. Hubbard on June 3 at Thurman Munson Memorial Stadium in Canton.

In head coach Matt Weymer’s second season at the helm of the Canfield baseball program, the Cardinals made their first regional final appearance since 2018. Getting back there is the goal, but the third-year coach is hesitant to put too much pressure on his team to do so.

Weymer explained that keeping things fun and loose is how he’s planning on guiding the Cardinals back to Canton in June.

“We have very high expectations, obviously, with the team that we returned from last year, the guys that we have coming back, but we want to make sure that the expectations are not crippling,” Weymer said last week. “I think a lot of times in high school teams, there’s such an expectation that every day it feels more like a job than just kids playing baseball. So we want our kids to have fun. We want to work hard every day.

“We know we’re going to win some games, we know we’re going to lose some games, but we want to be in great shape when the tournament comes around in May, and hopefully, much like last year, we’re able to get on a little bit of a run.”

The fun started last Monday, when Canfield shut out Salem 9-0 in its season opener. Then, the Cardinals escaped the dreary conditions at home by flying down to Tennessee, where they played four games, including one against defending Tennessee Class 3A state champion Greeneville, and, possibly more importantly, hung out off the diamond.

“Anytime you get the kids out of town, get them all together in a big cabin, those are where the best memories are made, it seems like,” Weymer said. “The whole bonding out-of-state and spending time with each other doing things other than baseball. We played mini golf, then went down the mountain coasters they have here today. Just having those times, those memories with the kids is always a lot of fun.”

Had the Cardinals stayed in the Valley, it is unlikely that they would have been able to play as often as they did during their brief sojourn in Tennessee, which would have only made it tougher for Weymer and his coaching staff to evaluate their team before All-American Conference play begins next week.

The extra games are especially helpful considering Canfield lost more than half a dozen seniors to graduation from its 2025 regional final team, including key contributors such as Zain Jadallah, David Murphy and Dylan Mancini. As a result, the Cardinals could very well look quite a bit different a month or two from now.

“I think we’re kind of in a spot where we know we lost eight seniors that meant a lot to us, but we bring a lot back,” Weymer said. “Our junior class, a lot of those guys played a lot as sophomores. And the areas that we need to fill in from last year, we’ll spend the early part of the year playing a lot of different guys, moving people around and trying to figure out what fits best. The baseball season is a lot of evolution. The lineup we have tonight here in Tennessee might not be the lineup we have by the time we get to the tournament in May. So you’re just kind of always trying to figure out what fits best where.”

Weymer said he expects the pitching and defense to be the backbone of his 2026 team, adding that he feels “very confident in” Anthony Groner, Ryan Weibling, Joey Gabriel, Theo Richards, Jackson Johnson, Logan Patellis, Will Murphy and Ursuline transfer Dom Polkovitch on the mound this season.

However, at the plate, the Cardinals’ 1-2-3 hitters from a year ago are gone, making it more important than before for Canfield to make the most of its offensive opportunities and become “elite” defensively. The latter, Weymer hopes, will come despite having to replace Mancini at catcher with sophomore A.J. Economous.

“It’s just the natural progression of things, where you’re adding kids, you’re subtracting kids, you’re bringing kids in, you’re taking kids out,” Weymer said. “That’s why the offseason is so important. You want the kids together so that when they come up to the varsity, it’s not like this big culture shock thing. It’s just more of like, ‘Hey, I’ve been around enough that I know what the expectations are.'”

Regardless of who is playing come the beginning of the playoffs in May, Canfield (3-2) will have its sights set on adding another district championship to its trophy case. After that, everything is, as Weymer put it last year, “bonus baseball.”

“For every team that I’ve coached, our biggest goal is always to get to the district final. Winning the district is the ultimate prize, so everything we do is kind of geared towards there,” Weymer said. “That’s a very realistic expectation that we expect to be in every year. It doesn’t mean you’re going to win the district every year, but we expect to be in that game, have a great chance to win that game and make it to the regional.

“There’s not a lot of pressure for us to tell them, ‘Hey, there are these big expectations out of you.’ They know. Playing baseball for Canfield comes with a certain degree of expectation. And like I said, the only thing that we kind of have to make sure that they don’t do is they don’t let that cripple them. You’re going to struggle some games. You’re going to not play so well sometimes. But the next day is a new day, and you kind of pick it up and go from there. … I think we have a lot of confidence that no matter what the record is, or no matter how many ups and downs the season goes through, we’re just going to be, come tournament time, in a great position to make another run.”