Dynasty Defined: Cedar Crest Upends Warwick To Capture L-L League Championship For Second Straight Year, Third Time Since 2020, As Falcons Claim Fifth Conference Crown Since 2014

Written by: Andy Herr on February 15, 2025

Cedar Crest: 2020 League Champs

Cedar Crest: 2024 League Champs

Cedar Crest: 2025 League Champs

“The Team of the Decade.” How does one achieve such a distinction? Admittedly, it’s a bit of an inexact science in a way.

Sometimes, it’s based purely on intuition and what your gut has to say about it. Ala, which programs routinely step up in the biggest of moments and routinely deliver when called upon the most? Other times, it is in fact an exact procedure as a quick glance over at either number of wins accrued or win percentage will lay everything out there for bare.

Beyond that though, how exactly do you define a decade?

Is it solely based upon the calendar’s determination as to when a new decade begins with a year that ends with a 0? Or, do you stretch that timeline out even further and judge it upon a ten-year-to-ten-year length of time like you would this year and bookend your definition spanning from 2015 to 2025?

Either way, no matter how you personally determine is the best and correct way in which to judge, the fact of the matter was that on Friday night at Manheim Township, the two boys’ basketball programs inside the Lancaster-Lebanon League that are firmly sitting at the front row of this exact conversation decided to “run it back” for the second year in a row when it came to the final 32 minutes of formalized league competition coinciding with the L-L championship game.

If you want to talk from 2020 onward, there really is no debate needed when it comes to determining that both Cedar Crest and Warwick are far and away the two franchises that have essentially run roughshod over their fellow conference brethren within the league tourney in said time.

Aside from this being the second year in a row in which the Falcons and Warriors decided to set a Valentine’s weekend date with one another for determining conference supremacy, this meeting would also mark the third time since 2020 that the league’s final game of the year pitted this exact pair in this exact same scenario. Oh, and if you’re wondering, Cedar Crest had emerged as the victor in each of those prior contests.

Now, if you indeed want to drag the length of time outward and flip it backwards to 2015 as mentioned, that’s fine too. Even if you decide to go that route, you’re probably going to get the same exact result, nonetheless.

For specifics, with both Cedar Crest and Warwick entering the 2025 grand finale yet again in their same familiar, almost birthright-esque spots of being the last two teams standing, this would mark a staggering sixth time within the previous ten years where an L-L boys’ basketball championship game would feature the services of either Cedar Crest and/or Warwick.

As far as the final results inside of those games were concerned, while the Warriors came into Friday while lugging around an 0-3 mark dating back to their 2019 finals appearance that came against Manheim Township, still the only time in which the host school has played on their home floor since the championships moved from Hershey to Manheim Township beginning in 2008, Cedar Crest on the other hand has simply thrived in this spot with the Falcons staring down the possibility of bringing their fifth gold trophy acquired since 2014 back home with them across the Lebanon County line come late Friday night with a jubilant bus ride back to their neck of the woods.

So, what would end up being the theme come the end of this one between these two old Section One foes? Two brands that for years were seen fighting tooth and nail in trying feverishly to stay just within the middle pack and outside the cellar inside a crowded Section One field throughout much of the 21st century prior to Warwick moving down to Section Two a handful of years ago that coincided with Cedar Crest’s overall ascension?

In short, while history repeated itself with the matchup on its own, so too would the end result also be par for the course and what we’ve come to expect in terms of recent trendlines when it came to gold being the unofficial Cedar Crest school color to go alongside their traditional scheme of blue and silver.

To be sure, one of the more curious elements at play figured to be who would land the first punch on this night. Sure, it would make sense to see Cedar Crest, the team looking to go back-to-back, be the unit wound tighter than a drum and be a nervous ball of energy. Conversely, Warwick on the other hand was trying to shake that metaphorical gorilla off their back in not having yet triumphed in this exact spot three times prior.

Spoiler alert, but it would be the Falcons hitting first.

For that, leaning on the efforts of he who is without much debate the best big man in the entire conference this season, RJ Young, Cedar Crest’s 6’8 senior center was able to come away with a traditional three-point play inside the opening frame that saw the Falcons surge out in front by a 9-4 count with 3:37 remaining in the first quarter with both teams now starting to get their sea legs somewhat inside this cauldron of emotion out of the chute.

RJ Young En Route To The Hoop

But he wouldn’t be done there.

No, not when his take to the cup through contact would later up the Cedar Crest advantage to an 11-6 difference with 40.1 seconds remaining in the first quarter, a moment which would precede a tip-in of his doing once more on their ensuing trip down the floor offensively, as RJ Young had emphatically helped usher his troops out to a fairly commanding 13-6 cushion over Warwick prior to enter the second stanza with Young tallying nine of the Falcons’ first baker’s dozen.

Gradually, Warwick began getting warm to this fight come the start of the game’s second act.

As they have routinely made their living over the years – hitting from beyond the arc – the Warriors’ old formula came to their benefit while understandably being knocked back on their heels somewhat following Crest’s initial salvo.

In that regard, a corner trifecta knocked by Warwick 6’2 senior wing, Caleb McCamant, sprung the Warriors back to within four at a 17-13 count with McCamant’s 3-ball coming in the aftermath of a tough take to the rack by another Warwick senior, Caleb Johnsen, with just two minutes and change left outstanding on an demonstrably low-scoring first 14 minutes up until that point.

And while a determined take to the bucket by way of one of Cedar Crest’s litany of senior stalwarts, Jackson Custer, wouldn’t be far behind when it came to upping the Falcons’ cushion to a half dozen at 19-13 almost 40 seconds later, the Warriors were able to put together a late second quarter stretch to do something they hadn’t been able to accomplish up until that point—play with the lead.

Jackson Custer Drawing Contact

All told, it would crystalize into the form of a 5-0 Warriors’ jaunt with the game-high scorer on the night overall, Warwick’s Parker Horst, who would post a 15-point outing, doing his share of the yeoman’s work in tallying all five here to get the Warriors within a point, 19-18, with roughly one minute left to go in the first half. Then, Warwick’s first ownership of the scoreboard wouldn’t have long in terms of a waiting period beyond that juncture as a McCamant take to the cup helped to send Warwick into the halftime clubhouse with the 20-19 lead following a first half in which it largely felt as if Cedar Crest had dictated the terms of all things considered.

But as they had done all this week, while either trailing and/or being tied up in both their quarterfinal and semifinal round games coming on Monday and Wednesday respectively, while one group of Falcons went into the dressing room for the halftime message, another team wearing the same exact jerseys would just as quickly emerge come the start of the third frame.

In this instance, a timely 7-0 spurt which helped raise the curtain on the third quarter was capped off by a Jackson Custer hoop plus the harm — with the free throw added on top — quickly made it a 27-22 Cedar Crest lead with all of 2:13 having evaporated off the third quarter clock.

Yet just when they may have started feeling good about things and that this too would end up in the exact same manner as the two games previous in which Cedar Crest eventually ran away and hid from their opposition of Lancaster Country Day and Conestoga Valley respectively in the third and fourth quarters of those affairs, the Falcons quickly found out that silencing this group of Warriors from Warwick was a task altogether different.

Sure enough, over the course of the next few minutes, that somewhat sizable Cedar Crest lead would get sliced down to the slimmest of possible margins, 29-28, following the tandem exploits of Parker Horst’s second trifecta of the evening which came before a Jahkai Dixon take to the tin with all of three minutes left to go in the third by that point.

From there, while the lead would change ownership over the final few minutes of the quarter considering a Dylan Groff take to the bucket which made it a 31-30 Falcons’ lead, another of Dixon’s mammoth-sized buckets on Friday night on the ensuing Warwick possession allowed the Warriors to head into the final eight minutes while owning the 32-31 lead with dreams of potentially capturing their first league title since 1988.

But those aspirations will have to wait just a little while longer. At least if Danny Speaks had anything to say about it.

Danny Speaks Looking To Score

While the Cedar Crest 6’0 lefty guard who came to the Cornwall-Lebanon School District by way of Philadelphia prior to the start of his freshman season may not necessarily ever lead the top of the Falcons’ scouting report from the opposition’s perspective, not treating him with the respect he deserves when it comes to his overall game is certainly a gross miscalculation if so. And not to intimate in the slightest that Warwick did in fact do just that, but Speaks, in this his final season, made sure to put the rest of the local audience on notice heading down the final stretch of this title fight just in case.

While Warwick was still narrowly controlling things in terms of possessing the bigger numeral under their name up on the scoreboard at that time, Danny Speaks decided to turn the baton back over to his team’s side of the ledger with a cold-blooded trifecta from the elbow-extended which then ushered Cedar Crest out to a 36-34 lead near the midway point of the final act.

They would never trail the rest of the way on the road back to south Lebanon as it turned out.

From there, after awarding the Falcons a lead in which they would never relinquish with his prior trey, another of Speaks’ patented takes to the tin – while en route to sharing team-high scoring honors with a 14-point showing — made it a 38-34 Cedar Crest lead with Warwick starting to feel the walls caving in upon them with just 2:15 left to play.

Later, the one he happened to share in those team-high scoring honors with, RJ Young, seemed to finish things off in lieu of a breakaway, one-handed dunk in front of his fellow student section as Young’s dunk made it a 40-34 Falcons’ lead with time, aside from Cedar Crest themselves, being the foremost enemy of Warwick.

RJ Young’s Exclamation Point Dunk

Yet try as they might, the Warriors did their best to make a go of it late, albeit with the eventual outcome seeming to be all but inevitable.

For those efforts, following a pair of enormous Ya’Majesty Washington triples, the Warriors’ uber-talented junior wing’s first points compiled of the evening until that point, the gap had closed down to four at 44-40 with just 7.3 ticks left.

But they would draw no closer.

And following a one more free throw chipped in by another of the ten Cedar Crest seniors found littered on this year’s roster with Isaac Wolfe having the last of the honors, it was indeed a journey of going back-to-back fulfilled as a 45-40 Cedar Crest triumph over Warwick on Friday night not only marked the Falcons’ sixth L-L title in program history, but the school’s fifth compiled since 2014 as well.

Afterwards, after taking time to revel in the congratulatory pictures and well-wishes from friends and family alike, two of the Falcons’ key cogs in this verdict, Danny Speaks and RJ Young respectively, seemed to take just a little bit extra pride in this league championship considering it comes in both their shared senior campaigns.

“I had some ups and downs,” Speaks candidly admitted of his performance against Warwick in this game, gold medal around his neck notwithstanding. “At the beginning, I couldn’t really score. In the second half, the coaches just told me to play my game. That’s what I did,” spoke Speaks. “Even though I missed some layups, I’ve just helped my team out all year with my defense where I try to stop the other team’s best player. That’s what I did tonight.”

Jackson Custer And Danny Speaks Celebrate Another League Title

And he helped swing the game in his team’s favor too once his offensive prowess followed suit.

“Yeah, I could tell once I hit that three (to go in front 36-34), it just sort of took (Warwick’s) energy. They kind of slowed down a little bit and we picked up the pace,” Speaks remarked of his game-tilting play. “After that, they had to start fouling and we had to make our free throws.”

Danny Speaks Embraces Tommy Smith During Medal Ceremony

That what was the end of the contest. As far as the beginning was concerned and the mental side that undeniably was a storyline at play in this one, rest assured that Cedar Crest wanted to let their opposition know that dethroning the champs wouldn’t be an easy task.

“For sure. We always want to be the team that punches first,” RJ Young, who by this time had wandered away from the mob scene on the floor with the league championship trophy pinned under his left arm pointed out. “We jumped out big in the first quarter and little part there in the second…We’ve been there, and we wanted to stay there.”

RJ Young On LLHoops Postgame Show With L-L League Trophy

“That 3 that he hit, that was a momentum-killer for them,” Young then said when asked about Speaks’ go-ahead trifecta and how it then eventually turned the tide of the outcome away from Warwick and into the hands of he and the Falcons. “We went on a that 7-0 run then, but that’s what he does. He takes big shots,” Young added of Speaks. “He can do that. We have all the confidence in the world that he can take over a game like that.”

As far the one who has engineered this program’s remarkable turnaround, Tommy Smith, who now rightly occupies a spot when the discussion shifts to best coaches that the Lancaster-Lebanon League has ever produced while fresh off having his “one for the thumb” moment in winning his fifth league title on Friday evening, while one is never truly better another, this one might actually be the iteration within that mix of five that personifies Cedar Crest to an absolute T.

Tommy Smith Celebrates With His Players Following His Fifth L-L Title

“I said the other night, toughness wins,” said Smith when reflecting back to his quote following his team’s semifinal win over Conestoga Valley on Wednesday night, a victory on the Buckskins’ home floor no less. “This team is just so tough. There’s so many things that happen throughout a basketball season and they just battled through all of it,” he said of his troops. “When things weren’t good, they still battled through. When things were good, they battled through….There is no favorite of any one of these, but this one is very, very satisfying because a lot of people counted us out. A lot of people didn’t think we’d be here again this year.”

As Smith alluded to, not many figured that Cedar Crest would be a shoo-in to make it back to Manheim Township come mid-February 2025. Hard to argue perhaps given that the Falcons saw the departure of the oft-called “Baby Falcons,” a group that took their lumps in their formative years before ascending to the league’s mountaintop last season prior to their graduation. Add in the fact that Cedar Crest was also trying to go back-to-back for the first time since 2014 & 2015, the last instance in which any L-L program has been able to do so, and it’s easy to again see as to why this one feels as fulfilling at it does.

“Getting to the top is one thing, but staying on top is so difficult. You’re getting everyone’s best shot every night,” Smith explained of the challenge presented and in turn achieved now twice over during his tenure. “Back in December when McCaskey beat us at home, they celebrated on our floor like they had just won a league championship,” said Smith of team’s somewhat perplexing defeat to the Tornado back at that time. “That was an eye-opener for me, and I think a good reminder to our guys of, ‘You’re getting everyone’s best shot here. You need to prepare like it, and you need to be able to accept that.’ That’s why it’s so difficult to go back-to-back.”

As for this game, the perfect encapsulation as to what it meant in repeating as the conference’s champion while having to do it against the same foe two times in a row? Yeah, that too hit different in their camp.

“Number one, when you come in the underdog after you won it last year and you’ve beaten that same team, there’s a little bit of a chip on your shoulder,” Smith said without hesitation. “Number two, we talked about punching first for reasons due to us starting off slow in both games,” he added of their eventual quarter and semifinal round triumphs found this week. “That was a point of emphasis to start fast. But the message to them before we came out on the floor was, ‘You guys have prepared for this moment since you’ve been in 1^st grade. Go out and play fearless. Go out and play loose. You have nothing to lose.’ I think they did that tonight.”

But therein lies one of the primary reasons as to why Cedar Crest has been able to stay at the top more perhaps more than anything.

Yes, while this at its core is nothing more than an extracurricular school activity housed inside a public school district with enrollment numbers that force it to play against only the largest that the state of Pennsylvania has to offer, it’s true reality, especially during the Smith-era, is that this Cedar Crest boys’ basketball program is actually a well-run family business if you want to cut to the chase. There’s a reason why the names on the bench, whether it be dressed in uniforms or in zipups, never really change. This is all they’ve ever known. And who they’ve ever known. It’s a reality that’s impossible to ignore or downplay.

“It’s great,” RJ Young said of now having the opportunity in going back-to-back along with his dad, Ross Young, one of Smith’s most loyal of assistants on the Falcons’ bench over the years. “We shared a moment where we hugged out there…This one means more to me than the first one because I’m a senior now,” Young later acknowledged. “(His dad) has seen this whole senior group come up and play along the way. Just the fact that I got this one with him as a senior with what might be his last year doing this, that just makes it a thousand times better.”

RJ Young Cutting The Nets For The Second Time

Ironically, while the Young’s are not the only family that has played a pivotal role during this recent stretch of Cedar Crest success, the one in charge of this whole deal, Tommy Smith, has yet to experience that same feeling. Nevertheless, he enjoys his small part in helping make forever memories with those that he loves the most.

“The Custer’s, the Young’s, the Schomp’s getting to do it last year,” Smith said listing his fellow assistants and their next of kin that have been on these Falcons’ teams that have since won championships inside a shared space with another. “When I took them on, their kids were in diapers,” he remarked of the years that have since flown by and his faithful lieutenants. “To see it come full circle for them, it’s super exciting.”

But Smith’s turn may not be far behind as it turns out.

“My son (Jackson) is a freshman who was a part of our JV team that went undefeated this year,” Smith said proudly. “I’m looking forward to having the opportunity to hopefully share in this same moment with him some day. That’s a way’s away yet, but God willing, I think we will have that opportunity.”

Rest assured, if the Falcons can continue on this similar trajectory, there won’t be any need for divine intervention. They’ll be able to get the job done purely based on their own merits. And if they do, one of the greatest runs ever seen in the 50-plus year history of this conference will add yet another chapter to its already firmly secured legacy.