Furm's Take: Reflecting On A Championship Reflection
By Cory Furman
Assistant Athletics Director, Messiah College
Archives | Contact | About
Posted Sept. 3, 2009
A national championship ice cream-eating contest was just part of the fun for the Messiah softball team Wednesday night. Take a look at the complete photo gallery here.

Harrisburg, PA — Went to Metro Bank Park last night for the 2009 Messiah College Softball National Championship Celebration, and a Harrisburg Senators game broke out …

Ba-da-dum. Thank you! Be sure to tip your waitress.

In case you missed it, Messiah honored its 2009 national championship softballers with a fun-filled evening at the local minor league facility Wednesday night, leaving a number of lasting impressions upon yours truly. Among them:

• Messiah College has the greatest NCAA Division III athletics program in the nation. Sure, I’m biased, but over 600 employees, students, parents and fans came out to the ballpark to salute their championship team last night. I personally counted 579 wearing Messiah athletics apparel.

Not only does Messiah win national championships, the people here genuinely enjoy others’ successes. I thanked a group of men’s soccer players for coming out, and junior goal-scoring-freak Geoff Pezon said, “We wouldn’t miss it.”

My point exactly.

• As the team was introduced before the start of the night’s first game, sophomore pitching sensation Jess Rhoads strolled to the mound to toss out the ceremonial first pitch. Per the request of Messiah president Kim Phipps, she windmilled a softball to the Senators’ Freddie Bynum.

As soon as the ball whistled into Bynum’s glove, an ear-to-ear smile crossed his face through the plume of mitt dust. You could almost read his mind:

I can see why Messiah won the national championship.

An older gentleman was standing next to me, wearing more Harrisburg Senators gear than is probably socially acceptable. He leaned to his friend and said, “She should pitch for us.”

• I’ve got a new favorite singing group: New Light. The collection of five Messiah students belted out an a cappella national anthem that brought the house down. The same gentleman again leaned over to his buddy and said, “They can bring them back for every game.”

He smiled and adjusted his Senators suspenders.

• Organisms that love Fandango: Kids. Organisms that would like to maul Fandango: Dogs. Probably not the best combination of having the Falcons’ Number One Fowl strolling throughout a 6,302-seat stadium on ‘Bark In The Park Night – All Pets Get In Free.’

Fortunately, there was minimal feather loss.

• Messiah softball may have been the evening’s guests of honor Wednesday night, but they had to do some work. The team did a respectable job of singing ‘Take Me Out To The Ballgame’ during the ‘seventh’ inning stretch of the first ballgame, while sophomore Abi Buchler and seniors Tori Hatt, Abby Bergakker and Nicole Adams engaged in an ice cream eating contest between innings of the second.

I thought the ice cream eating contest would be fun. I thought I’d see the girls smiling and joking during the 30-second stuff-as-many-sandwiches-in-your-face-as-possible time frame.

Uh, no.

There were scowls. There were elbows. And there was a winner – Hatt – much to the dismay of the other three.

Adams nearly fell down at the end, from what looked to be a migraine brain freeze.

I asked junior pitcher Roo Eby why this friendly contest had turned into a blood bath of vanilla and chocolate.

“We’re national champions,” she said, stoically. “We compete.”

(Note to families of players: Remove planned game of Cornhole from Labor Day weekend festivities.)

• And speaking of ice cream, why is it that people love that stuff more than oxygen? Yeah, Messiah gave out free Hershey’s ice cream toward the end of the first game. The line stretched around the entire outfield boardwalk.

Me, I just don’t get it. People were waiting for over an hour to get a scoop of ice cream in a cup. I mean, it’s ice cream, not a cure for the swine flu.

Seeing as how he was on the clock working for me, my student assistant attempted to sidle in toward the front of the growing mass of humanity, wanting to quickly grab some ice cream before returning to his duties. He was punched in the back of the head.

(Note to Messiah student body: Fear our Dean of Students.)

• Possibly the only personal downfall of the entire evening was being confronted by senior third baseman Lindsay Hall. Try as I may to avoid her, she finally found me.

“Hey!” she said. “I have a question for you.”

So maybe I used Hall’s floating head on a softball celebration flyer that was distributed to all first-year students last week. And so maybe I had a bubble coming from her mouth reading, ‘It’s going to be a party, y’all.’ And so maybe I didn’t ask her beforehand if any of this was okay.

“I’ve been on campus for four days, and people that I don’t know keep looking at me funny,” she said to me. “Some of them keep muttering something about ‘having a party, y’all.’ You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

Me? Never. I’m just here for the free ice cream.


Cory Furman is the assistant athletics director for public relations and marketing at Messiah College. His monthly column, “Furm’s Take” does not necessarily represent the views of Messiah College or the Messiah College department of athletics. Have a comment? Click here to send him an email.