So we did it.  We won the regular season title for 2010 and finished off the year with 8 straight conference wins (10 if you include the first two games of the conference tournament).  What a great season and the guys did it as a team. 

This team had great leadership, and they help each other accountable everyday.  You do not often see that from a group of ball players at any level but for a group of 34 college students to be able to pull it off is special.  This team worked hard all year long and never let anything get to them.  You would always here the team say “1 game at a time” and “the game we are playing is the most important game of the year”.  As a coaching staff we kept saying “play all nine innings”.  This group bought into what they were taught and they truly believed in what they said.  We treated every game as it was the biggest game of the year and we always played 9 innings.  The guys never gave up and because of that we had multiple come from behind walk off wins, two of which were in the same weekend.  We came back against Akron down 3 in the 9th and tied it and then won it in the 10th.  Then the next day we were down 4 and scored 5 in the bottom of the 9th to complete the single most unbelievable weekend in my baseball history.  In the conference tournament three outs away from elimination we were down 8-5 and scored 4 runs for the win and the chance to play in the championship game.  Although we came up short the guys did not quit in that game either.  After falling behind 5-0 the team scored 3 in the 8th to make it interesting and had runners on 1st and 2nd in the bottom of the 9th with no outs.  Yes we lost, but there was never a feeling of we can’t win. 

Hard work, dedication, trust in each other, accountability, the ability to take 1 it one game at a time, and being able to worry about only the things they could control were all reasons why this team was successful.  They never let the small things get to them, they never allowed bad calls or outright bad umps to take them out of their game, they never allowed each other to quit, and they always picked each other up.  If you coaches out there can figure out how to get your guys to do these things, you will have a great team no matter the circumstances.