BEVERLY, Mass. -- The Endicott College baseball program is in the midst of its second consecutive 40-win season, has won eight conference championships and produced a pair of professional players in a history that spans less than 30 years.
Bryan Haley (Hartford, Conn.) has been the program's caretaker for more than half of its existence. The aforementioned accolades alone are enough to make a coach proud, but it is hard to match the story that Haley’s current team is writing and the heights that could be reached within a week’s time.
For the first time ever, Endicott will represent New England at the NCAA Division 3 Baseball Championship. The Gulls’ College World Series run in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, begins Friday (2:15 p.m. ET) against a familiar foe in Baldwin Wallace, which advanced into last year’s eight-team field after sweeping a Super Regional series from Endicott on its home turf at North Field.
“We’ve worked 16 years as a program to get here,” Haley said after the 7-3 Saturday win over Ithaca that allowed the Gulls — who are 45-7 overall and ranked fourth in the pre-tournament edition of the D3baseball.com/NCBWA Top 25 — to finish their own sweep, advancing to the ultimate destination after three previous attempts fell a round short.
