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College baseball nearly saw a miracle at Messiah University this year.
The Messiah Falcons made a run all the way to the Division III World Series championship game on June 5 in one of the most historic seasons in program history.
But for coach Phillip Shallenberger and his team, the goal wasn’t even to get there. Their goal was simply to be good Christians.
“It stopped becoming about, like, ‘OK, can we win a national championship,’ and it started becoming, like, ‘How can we point people closer to Christ?’” Messiah pitcher Daniel Knight told Fox News Digital.
About halfway through this season, after a 1-6 start, the team underwent a priority shift. No longer did they show up to the clubhouse every day with a main goal to win. Now, they were simply serving Christ.
“We used to sit in the video room, and we would show the other pitcher and show what the other team does and really focus on what they were doing,” Shallenberger said. “And then at about that point we started shifting toward just diving into the Word a little bit more. Like, ‘How does God want us to lead?’
“It was a bit more on the devotionals and bit less on the scouts. And that was actually about the time we started to play a lot better.”
Shallenberger even made his players carry 250-pound crosses as a team workout.
“We do that right in the middle of our conference season in between games,” Shallenberger said.
But one time, Knight did the cross-carrying workout just before a game on April 17 against Eastern. He threw eight and a third shutout innings with nine strikeouts in that game.
It marked a shocking turnaround for Knight, who got off to a poor start to the season with a 9.26 ERA.
“It was kind of a wake-up call for me is that you know what the most important thing we can do is glorify God and always having that at our forefront if that means sacrificing being at our best physically and the more reason to rely on the Lord and his strength those are the choices that started to be made after that point,” Knight said.
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Knight said the change came on a morning when he was reading scripture and heard God tell him, ‘It’s not about you.’
“When I was focused on myself, I was becoming depressed. And then when I had that shift of God telling me, ‘It’s not about you,’ I saw a change in when I was trying to serve other people, that I was receiving more joy,” Knight said.
Knight and the Falcons busted out of their 1-6 start with a 16-4 win against Dickinson College on March 4. From there, they became one of the hottest teams in Divison III, winning 16 of their next 19.
Along the way, Shallenberger and his players started adding scripture to their play-call wristbands, where they used to place pitches and signs.
“It would say, ‘Whatever, bunt defense,’ or whatever we wanted. But [Shallenberger] also added some sayings, like one was like, ’Surrender your hands’ or ‘Jesus over everything,’” said infielder Drew Hurst.
“So I know for me, there would be multiple times where either I would make an error or strike out to end an inning and then run on the field and maybe be a little bit p—ed off at myself. But he always would put those on as a little reminder of why [we] play this game, and it’s not about our performance or what we do win-wise, but how we, with body language on the field, show love to Jesus and the other team and whoever else is watching us.”
The players also studied characters in the Bible with Paul the Apostle becoming a team favorite.
They finished the regular season 27-13 and then stormed through the Commonwealth Tournament, NCAA Regionals, Super Regionals and then the first two rounds of the World Series.
They fell short of taking home the trophy, losing to University of Wisconsin-Whitewater in two games.
But Hurst, Knight and many of Shallenberger’s other devoted players will be back next year for a potential full season of putting faith over wins.
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