The team struggled to just make its own conference tournament, for crying out loud. The dark days in late April leading up to that final regular season day at Taylor Field seem so, so long ago now. The disappointment of being ousted from the conference tournament a full day before Louisiana College was eventually crowned champion is now not even a memory, it's been erased completely. There was even a long week's wait between the conference tourney and the announcement of NCAA regional bids, a week that made it seem like the season was already over because there were no games being played.
Then suddenly, it what seemed like a blink of an eye, the Tigers were dogpiling in Eau Claire, Wisc., on a sweltering Monday afternoon.
Huh? Yes, it's a little bit unbelievable, in every sense of the word.
You sit back as a sports fan and you watch on TV as teams find a way to get it going at the right time, get hot for a few days during a championship and create pure magic. But you never ever dream it's going to happen to your team.
Tiger fans, it happened. Your lady Tigers are national champions and will forever be listed in the NCAA record books. Deal with it.
There are so many storylines to this team, still, that you will almost certainly miss one if you tried to capture any single, given moment. This is a team that, over a seven-day span, knocked off the top-ranked team in the land, a longtime rival that had dominated the series between the two teams on its home field for years. They then came from behind to win three of their four World Series games, including two against one of the most powerful teams in the NCAA, longtime playoff nemesis Linfield.
They did it by coming from three runs down in the final three innings, after leaving the bases loaded not once but twice, and by getting the luckiest of all bad hops on the final play of the season.
It was fitting that the championship was won on that play. The ball was just bouncing our way over the last eight games of the year.
Congratulations go to every member of the ETBU team, coaches, players, parents, trainers, students, faculty, staff, the plain-old every day fan. You find out during runs like this just how big your bandwagon is, and just how easy it is to welcome people aboard, no matter how fast you are flying by.
National champions. The first-ever from our conference and from our school as a NCAA member. Dreams sometimes do not die, after all.
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