“We had a lot of guys that had been in the program for a while, and we were all real tight. So that helped for sure. We had a good pitching staff and a lot of guys that could get on base and manufacture runs. We weren’t your prototypical ‘hit three home runs in a game.’ That team was more, ‘Let’s get on base. Let’s advance runners. Let’s steal bases.’ We kind of made things happen. We were grinders. That season, I was in the zone. The ball looked like a volleyball coming in at me. Once I got rolling, I couldn’t wait to play every day. Toward the end of the season, we ended up seeing our team in the national rankings. I remember thinking how awesome that was because we had worked so hard, and to be recognized as one of the best teams in the country was surreal. It’s not like every year we were going to the Super Regionals and had a chance to go to the World Series. (The Nittany Lions, who broke a school record with 45 wins, defeated North Carolina in the Upper Montclair Regional to advance to what remains their only Super Regional appearance in program history.) So, No. 1, just to get there, we were like, ‘This is pretty cool.’ This May, a lot of the players from the 2000 team are going back to State College for a reunion. When you get together with the guys, all these stories come out.”

Michael Campo ’00 H&HD was the Big Ten Player of the Year in 2000 after hitting .425 with a 41-game hitting streak. He’s now the assistant general manager for the Huntington Convention Center of Cleveland.