K-Ci and JoJo can take at least a little credit for where the University of Charleston softball team is today.
The Golden Eagles had boarded the bus back home from the Mountain East Conference softball tournament in a sour mood. West Virginia Wesleyan, which UC had swept in four regular season games and beaten earlier in the tournament, took two games in the championship round to keep Charleston from raising the MEC championship trophy.
As the ride home went on, spirits started to raise. The team held a makeshift graduation ceremony for the senior players who missed their commencement. Then the whole team started singing along with the Pandora music station. Among the tunes was K-Ci and JoJo's "All My Life," the R&B duo's 1998 No. 1 hit.
"That was the best time," junior left fielder Alyssa Stanley said.
"It was real, too," senior shortstop Allison Evans said. "This may be our last few games coming up, so all had the mentality of, we're not done yet. Let's go out and do this."
The Golden Eagles have done something no UC softball team has ever achieved before. At 9:30 p.m. Tuesday, Charleston will face Adelphi University from Garden City, New York in the first round of the NCAA Division II Women's College World Series in Denver. It is the Golden Eagles' first WCWS appearance.
As much as this feat has to do with the Charleston's proficient hitting or their pitching, which ranks among the nation's best, it has just as much to do with UC's camaraderie and refusal to settle.
In the days following his team's super regional win over West Virginia Wesleyan, UC head coach Ray Loeser said it hadn't totally hit him that his Golden Eagles had reached such unprecedented heights. But he's been able to soak in some of the euphoria.
"It's amazing," Loeser said. "There are no words that solidify the amount of work that people have done to get there. The main thing is, you go out there and give yourself a chance to play for a national championship."
The Panthers (34-20) are the first hurdle toward that goal. Adelphi, a Northeast-10 Conference tournament semifinalist, reached the WCWS by winning the East Regional, then taking two straight from Southern New Hampshire to win the super regional. The Panthers rank 103rd in Division II with a .294 batting average and 91st nationally with a 2.93 earned run average.
Comparatively, the Golden Eagles (50-10) own Division II's seventh-best ERA of 1.44. Their .310 team batting average is 55th nationally. The players believe there are other, intangible factors that have them playing at such a high level.
It showed in that post-MEC tournament singalong. They enjoy practicing together, playing together and just hanging out together. And that enhances their on-field performance.
"That's the great thing about his whole team," senior second baseman Jenna Evans said. "We have such good chemistry. We fit really well as puzzle pieces together."
The team's experiences have offered another source of motivation. Over the last four seasons, the Golden Eagles went from a team trying to break through into the regional tournament to a regional qualifier trying to reach a super regional to a WCWS entrant. Senior third baseman Kelly Browning said that, with each new goal reached, the team always found a new peak to scale.
"I just think we're never satisfied," she said. "Losing the conference [tournament] hurt. I think that stuck with us. We didn't want to feel that again. I think we really dug deep and found a new height to get to.
"I think it will just keep getting greater and greater the more we play and the bigger the stage we're on," Browning added.
Now Charleston has reached Division II's biggest stage and only seven teams stand between the Golden Eagles and an NCAA title. Loeser said that desire to reach higher hasn't faded yet.
"I've heard a couple of them, multiple times, say they don't want to lose their last game," Loeser said. "I told them a couple of times this year, if you constantly win your last game, you're national champion."