There's no rest for Cornell's baseball players. As soon as one season ended, another began.

Legion baseball season is already over a week old, and it's been a slow start for the Sto-Rox team, which features players from the Sto-Rox and Cornell school districts.

A 10-1 loss at home against Sewickley dropped the team to 0-3 on Sunday, but the team still has plenty of time to get on the winning track in the Ohio River League season.

"Cornell made the high school playoffs, so we didn't really get to practice. Then with all the rain, the weather we've had, it's hard to get time on the field, when you share it with Colt teams and Pony teams."

Of the team's 17-man roster, eight players are current or former Cornell players: Justin Bibbo, Dan Bosetti, Jamie Byron, Bryan Korzen, Matt Korzen, Billy Mackey, Zach Schibner and Andrew Weryha. Another two, Ron Glozzer and Jules Leto, are OLSH players, giving the Sto-Rox team a heavy Coraopolis influence.

Cornell head coach Nate Torboli is also helping to coach the Legion team, which should help provide some continuity for his players on a club that didn't even make it through 2007.

Last year, the Sto-Rox team folded and forfeited its remaining games near the end of the year, a result of low player turnout. Reilly feels that this year, that won't be an issue.

"We only started with 14 players last year. Kids at this age are working jobs, they go on vacation and some of them were getting down because we were losing," Reilly said.

"The kids are working hard this year, we've just been making some mistakes on the field."

Some of those mistakes were costly in the loss to Sewickley, as the team committed three errors. That resulted in three unearned runs, including the first two of the game for the visitors.

Dalton Worms took the loss on the mound, allowing seven runs (four earned) in four innings of work. Bosetti threw the final three innings in relief.

Worms did get the team on the board with an RBI single in the sixth inning, and Sto-Rox would go on to load the bases with Schibner coming to bat.

The Cornell sophomore made good contact off winning pitcher Andy Sharek, but his deep fly ball was caught in center field for the final out of the inning.

The age of players in Legion baseball can vary greatly, and one of the things working against Sto-Rox this year will be its youth. Over half of the players on the team will be in high school again next year, but during the summer season, they will be facing high school graduates and even some first-year college players.

"Most of these guys are 15, 16 years old, and they're going against 17 and 18-year old college kids. We faced a guy (Sharek) that's going to be a college pitcher today," Reilly said.

"We went 18-4 a few years ago, and that's because we had the older players on our team. But playing against better teams is good experience for them."

Torboli agrees with that philosophy, which is why he encouraged his varsity players to suit up for Legion ball, even if they were still young enough to play Colt baseball or another lower league.

In the Ohio River League, the team will face Moon, West Allegheny and West View-Ross amongst others, all three of which draw players from Class AAA and AAAA school districts.

For the players from Sto-Rox, a small AA school, and from Class A Cornell and OLSH, that is the kind of competition they won't see in the lower classifications during varsity play.

So far this season, the struggle for the Sto-Rox Legion team has been at the plate, producing just six runs and batting .147 through three games.

Four of those six runs were driven in by Matt Korzen, who homered in the season opener against Keystone Oaks on May 20, an 11-9 loss in which Sto-Rox left 13 runners on base.

Korzen is 3-for-9 at the plate, making him and Brian Piett (3-for-8), the only two players with multiple hits through three games.

Still, Reilly doesn't want his players to get discouraged about the slow start, especially with another 13 league games and a handful of other non-league contests remaining before the Allegheny County playoffs in July.

The top four teams in the nine-team Ohio River League advance to the postseason.

Sto-Rox has two games scheduled this weekend, a non-league home game on Saturday at 2p.m. against Upper St. Clair, then a Sunday game at West View-Ross at 5:30 p.m.

The team also has postponed games against West Allegheny and Keystone Oaks that will be made up at a date and time to be determined.