June 9, 2010

FARMVILLE, Va. -- Former Longwood University baseball standout Phil Cerreto/Midlothian was selected by the St. Louis Cardinals in the 40th round of the 2010 Major League Baseball Draft Wednesday during the final day of the three-day, 50-round amateur draft. The 6-1, 195-pound third baseman hit .414 with 10 home runs, a school-record 24 doubles, and 60 RBI as a senior with the Lancers during 2010. Cerreto, the draft's 1,219th overall selection, becomes the eighth Longwood baseball player to ever be drafted, and the first since 2006. Phil is the son of Stephen Cerreto and Madge Zacharias.

Cerreto started all 48 games for Longwood this year with a .715 slugging percentage and a .477 on-base percentage, adding 42 runs, one triple, 27 walks (eight intentional), seven sacrifice flies, one sacrifice hit, and six of seven stolen bases. He led the Lancers with 23 multi-hit games and 16 multi-RBI games, as well as in batting average, home runs, doubles, RBI, total bases (133), slugging percentage, on-base percentage, sacrifice flies, games, starts, and total plate appearances (223). Throughout his four-year career, including 189 games at Longwood, Cerreto hit .386 with 20 home runs, 54 doubles, and 164 RBI. He holds school-records for career hits (256) and sacrifice flies (22), and ranks second in at-bats (664), tied for third in games and doubles, tied for fifth in total bases (374), seventh in RBI, and eighth in batting average.

Other previous Longwood draft selections include Frankie Watson (7th round) and Kelvin Davis (24th round) in 1988 by Kansas City, Michael Tucker (1st round, #10 overall) and Scott Abell (37th round) in 1992 by Kansas City, LaRon Wilson (17th round) in 2002 by the New York Mets, Jeremy Knicely (42nd round) in 2003 by Toronto, and Charlie Yarbrough (7th round) in 2006 by Philadelphia.

Longwood completed its recent 2010 campaign with a final record of 28-20, marking its 29th overall 20-win campaign and 22nd season with at least 25 wins in the program's 33-year history. Veteran 32nd-year head coach Charles Buddy Bolding now has an outstanding overall record of 872-477-4 since taking over during the fall of 1978, including 29 winning seasons as mentor of the tradition-rich program.