Last year's Salisbury baseball team finished with the third-best record in the Lehigh Valley Legion Baseball League with a 13-5 campaign before falling to North Parkland in the playoffs.

However, as the Falcons began legion play on Sunday, things look completely different from last year's squad in a number of facets.

For one, the Salisbury squad will welcome players from Central Catholic, Dieruff and a college player from East Stroudsburg University (Jeff Trexler) to go along with nine Falcon players that suited up for junior varsity or varsity during the high school season. In 2013, the team's lineup consisted of solely Salisbury players.

Jonathan Benitez, Tama Anoa'i and Ariel Bonilla played for Dieruff, while Ryan Basta and Noah Adams are from Central Catholic.

"We had another practice today [Saturday], and they are kids that listen to everything I say," first-year head coach Chris Rapp said. "They're willing to play anything, and they just love playing the game.

"It seems that everybody has got their own defined role from their high school teams as they head over to mine. So it's actually mixing pretty well together."

The other change will come at the head coaching position. Taking over for Scott Heppenheimer, who is the assistant coach during the high school season, Rapp is entering his first season as a legion head coach. He previously coached the SYA knee-high division.

It's going to be a new experience for Rapp, as well as for 11 players who are participating at the legion level for the first time. But the dedication he has seen up and down the roster has already impressed the first-year coach.

"It seems they would run through a wall for their coaches, and they just like to play the game," Rapp said. "I just think they all love baseball."

Six players that were on the Falcons' varsity roster in the spring (Justin Besz, Chris Bishop, Adam Ebner, Michael Palmer, Carlos Santiago and CJ Tocci) will make the transition to legion. A number of other Falcons from this past season have chosen to play on various prospect teams to occupy their summer baseball cravings.

On the mound, Rapp expects a number of players to rotate innings throughout the 18-game season. Trexler, Ebner, Bishop, Bonilla and Benitez are a few of those names that figure to see time on the hill, but Rapp is still getting accustomed to all of his players early in the season

"My experience with these individual kids isn't there," Rapp said. "I've only coached a couple of them before. We do have a good mix of young and some older kids."

The team lost its top six batters from a year ago: Brad Vangeli (.415), Justin Aungst (.400), Nic Ampietro (.396), Evan Kulig (.289), Tyler Cooperman (.286) and Javier Rivera-Colon (.286). Those hitters may be gone, but Rapp expects a number of others to have solid seasons in the batter's box.

Rapp hopes his Falcon team comes out with a win every time it takes the field, but in his first season, he wants to see consistent improvement.

"Obviously I always want to win every game, but what I expect the most is that everybody gets better from the beginning of the year to the end of the year," Rapp said. "As a team, I expect us to win as many games as we can. I know some of these other teams are going to be more experienced, but I think we're going to have a lot of heart."

The Falcons host West Allentown Thursday and uth Parkland Friday at Salisbury High School.