FREDERICKSBURG — After concluding one of the most dominant individual seasons in Christopher Newport athletics history, Dylan Weber was named the Coast-To-Coast Athletic Conference Male Athlete of the Year after leading the dominant pitching staff for the nationally-ranked Captains baseball team throughout the 2024 season.
The annual award is the highest honor bestowed by the league and is presented by the conference office following a vote by the league’s athletic directors.
With the honor, Weber becomes the first baseball player in conference history to earn the award and adds to a stretch of now three straight Christopher Newport selections on the men’s side. He joins an elite group of just four CNU student-athletes to garner the Male Athlete of the Year recognition, following in the stead of 2018 honoree Jeff Dover, 2022 selection Max Wayne, and 2023 pick Jahn Hines.
Following a standout season that punctuates a career among the highest caliber in program history, Weber became just the second player in program history to garner first team All-American plaudits from both D3baseball.com and the American Baseball Coaches Association (ABCA). The senior southpaw was named the Region VI Pitcher of the Year by both organizations and was also the Coast-To-Coast Athletic Conference Pitcher of the Year for a second consecutive season. He collected first team All-Conference honors and was a three-time C2C Pitcher of the Week while also being named the National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association (NCBWA) National Pitcher of the Week once this season and twice during his career.
While leading the Captains’ top-ranked pitching staff, Weber started 15 games and appeared in 18 contests during his final season wearing the Royal Blue and Silver. He registered career-bests in every statistical category including a 9-2 overall win-loss record paired with a 1.66 ERA that ranks as the fifth best single season earned run average in program history. He held opponents to a paltry .185 batting average against, ranking second best all-time, and recorded 12.95 strikeouts per nine innings, also ranking as the second highest rate in CNU history.
Weber kept opponents off the basepaths and limited scoring against him by leaning on a deadly arsenal, mounting strikeouts by the dozen on route to a record-breaking season. The Sterling, Va. native led Division III in strikeouts this season with 140 punchouts while setting a program and conference record in K for a single year. He became the first pitcher ever at CNU to record more than one 100-K season in his career and finished out his tenure as the strikeout king both in Newport News and at the conference level, while moving into the top-five all-time in Division III with 405 K.
Over the course of the season, he struck out 10 or more in seven of his 15 starts and his ERA never rose above 2.00 as he climbed to a career-high 97.1 innings pitched. In addition to his role as the ace of the staff in the starting rotation, Weber also came out of the pen three times and recorded three saves.
Weber’s career will rank among the best in Christopher Newport history as the all-time leader in strikeouts also ranked second all-time in career victories. In his final two seasons alone, Weber compiled 17 wins and 247 strikeouts — marks that would already rank in the top-ten and top-five all-time at CNU — as he finished out his tenure in Newport News with back-to-back All-Region selections. He finished his CNU career with a 27-12 overall record and a 3.38 ERA.
This season, Weber helped lead the nationally-ranked Captains to a 29-12 overall record while advancing to the NCAA Super Regional for the first time in program history. The Captains finished the year ranked No. 12 in the D3baseball.com Top 25 poll and No. 15 in the ABCA rankings.
