Flash back to September 2024, Pilot Field, LSUS: As the baseball team, with 20 seniors, gathers to begin fall workouts, LSUS players adopt the mantra “win the Red Banner.”
The Red Banner, we’ve discovered via NAIA channels in the last 72 hours or so, is presented to the organization’s World Series champions each year.
It’s preposterous to think the Pilots knew about the “#BattleForTheRedBanner” last fall, this spring, or even, this week.
But it’s also preposterous to consider what they did this season, and finished Friday night.
Undefeated national champions. That’s absurd.
Just doesn’t happen in college baseball, at any level.
Too many games played, too many ways each time out to get beat. It’s baseball, where a good hitter delivers three times in 10 tries. Where any pitcher not named Paul Skenes will, even at his best, throw meatballs to the other guys every so often.
But here’s the outlier, the never been done so well before, brought to you by Brad Neffendorf and his uber-determined Pilots. We’ve just seen the final inning of the finest season by any ballclub to take the diamond at any level of the college game.
59 games, 59 wins. Nobody said it couldn’t be done, because there was nobody who considered it remotely possible. Not even the LSUS team. All they aimed to do was win the last game they played, in Lewiston, Idaho, and bring a natty back to the 318, to be No. 1 among 180+ ballclubs in the NAIA.
Now they’ve done it. And in a way that leaves them with a unique place in the history of the game, in the history of sports in our state, heck – in all the states.
This week, and especially Friday night, people near and far paid attention to the Pilots. People who had little or mostly no interest at any earlier point.
Average attendance at 33 LSUS home games: 84 people, officially. Not counting those in both dugouts or doing other things like umpiring or selling popcorn and cokes or taking tickets.
Don’t feel guilty not being among that number.
Interest expanded exponentially this week as the Pilots pushed through the World Series bracket, backing up a couple 6-3 wins with two double-digit victories to reach the championship round – getting there Thursday night with their landmark 58th straight win, more in a row than any college team at any level had ever strung together.
Friday night, very casual observers watched the frequently buffering stream on NAIA.org, in their living rooms, man caves or on their laptops or iPads, with others gathering at Walk-Ons a mile north of the LSUS campus, or at other watering holes around here.
Fascination spread far past Caddo Parish, all around the state. While the big boys, the LSU Tigers, were taking care of business in the Baton Rouge Regional, the Pilots were on the radar of many at Alex Box Stadium.
And elsewhere, at lunch in Lafayette, at supper in Slidell, during the endless happy hour at Antoon’s in Natchitoches, at Superior Grill not only on Line Avenue but also in Baton Rouge, New Orleans and Lafayette, for example, LSUS was a hot topic. When has that ever happened before?
The idea of an unbeaten national championship season in baseball was inconceivable. Was, until last night.
The reality of it: indescribable, if you ask the NAIA Pitcher of the Year, Pilots left-handed ace Isaac Rohde, who set down the last three hitters in order, quickly, in a fitting final appearance to set off the championship dogpile behind the mound at Harris Field in Lewiston.
“Unbelievable, that’s the only word for it. That’s perfection – it’s never been done, so it’s a crazy feeling. I can’t put it into words. There’s nothing that can describe what we’ve done.”
These guys would have been ecstatic if they weren’t Perfect Pilots, as long as they did win their last game in Big Sky country.
But every May, some team gets to figure out who is packing the Red Banner for the trip home. It’s an elite group, the collection of 68 teams to leave the field as champions.
No bunch of ballplayers before, and probably ever again, in the NAIA, or the NJCAA, or the NCAA, or whatever follows the NCAA, will ever walk away from their last outing knowing they never played a game they didn’t win.
The 2025 LSUS Pilots have that satisfaction for the rest of their lives.
Contact Doug at sbjdoug@gmail.com