The dogpile near the mound at the USA Baseball National Training Complex said everything. On Saturday, June 6, the No. 2 Tampa Spartans beat No. 1 West Chester 8-4 in the deciding game of the NCAA Division II championship series in Cary — and walked off as the first team in DII baseball history to win three straight national titles.
Three-peat. Done. Etched in stone.
A feat almost nobody has pulled off
Let this one sink in: Tampa is the first NCAA baseball program at any level to win three consecutive national championships since USC ran off five in a row from 1970 to 1974. Only two programs in the history of the sport have ever three-peated, and the Spartans are now one of them.
Oh, and it’s title number eleven overall — the most in Division II baseball history, a record Tampa keeps extending every June.
The road was anything but easy
West Chester didn’t go quietly. This was a best-of-three slugfest between the top two seeds. Tampa stole Game 1 on Thursday, 7-4 in 10 innings, behind a clutch RBI single from Nik Pereira and an RBI double from Jesse Ponce in the top of the 10th. The Golden Rams punched right back Friday, rolling 12-4 in Game 2 to force a winner-take-all finale.
So the season came down to one game. And the Spartans answered the way champions do.
Jump on ’em early, never look back
“I thought it was real important for us to come out and score first,” coach Joe Urso said — and his guys did exactly that. Jake Books opened the scoring with an RBI single in the first. Brayden Woodburn doubled home two in the third. Then the fourth inning broke it open: two RBI from catcher Jhoander Irigoyen, plus one each from Books and Jordan Evans. By the fourth, it was 6-0, and West Chester never got closer than five.
The MOP who refused to come out
Luke Fikar was named the championship’s Most Outstanding Player — and the junior out of Tampa’s Sickles High earned every letter of it. He’d already won Game 1 with 4⅔ scoreless innings of relief in that extra-inning nailbiter. In Game 3, he came in from second base with the bases loaded and two outs in the fifth, got Harry Middlebrooks to fly out, then gutted his way through jams in the seventh and ninth to slam the door — 4⅓ innings, two strikeouts, season record a perfect 5-0.
“You never underestimate a kid’s heart,” Urso said. “It was sharp, sinking, and to finish that was real impressive.”
Fikar’s own take? “I was pretty exhausted, but it was the last game of the season, and I had to give it my all.”
The bats that backed him
Irigoyen was everywhere at the plate, going 3-for-6 with a double and two RBI. Woodburn added two doubles and two RBI of his own. And in the bottom of the ninth, Landen Rozich capped a 4-for-4 day with a triple off the right-center wall. Fikar, Irigoyen, Woodburn, Books and Ponce all earned All-Tournament Team honors.
Dynasty stuff
Head coach Joe Urso now has three straight rings and eight national titles to his name — fitting for a man who was a second baseman on Tampa’s very first championship team back in 1992. The Spartans closed the year 51-9, rode a sixth straight Sunshine State Conference crown into the tournament, and tore through Bentley, Point Loma and Catawba just to reach the final.
For senior Woodburn, there for all three titles, it meant the world — he’s been blessed to live every one of them. But Urso framed the morning’s message around the 22 teammates chasing their first.
“There is a brotherhood that is built through championships. It doesn’t matter what level… once you get that first one, you’re part of that brotherhood forever.”
Stand as one
Eleven banners. Three straight. The winningest program in DII baseball history just made more of it — and welcomed 22 more brothers into a club that only grows.
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