Coastal’s national championship illustration of Biblical principle

The heartwarming story of our own Coastal Carolina Chanticleer baseball team is now history. This group of players promised their coach, who—for 21 years—had dreamed of taking a team to the College World Series, that they would be the ones to do so.

Against giant odds, the Chanticleers went down to LSU, a perennial powerhouse in college baseball, and in that park won two successive games to advance to the College World Series. CCU was was not finished. Even though in the first game of the World Series they had to face the No. 1 team in the nation, Florida, Coastal was victorious.

If that wasn’t enough, after losing to Texas Tech, which put Coastal in the losing bracket, they proceeded to defeat TCU twice and, once again, advanced to the championship series. Then, facing an Arizona team, which had won four national championships, the undaunted Chanticleers—with two outs in the bottom of the 9th inning, with Arizona players at second and third and one of their top hitters at the plate—the Coastal pitcher struck him out, and the Coastal Carolina Chanticleers became national champions.

This David and Goliath team has put Myrtle Beach, Conway and Coastal Carolina University on the map for the entire world. Like David in the Bible facing giant odds (Goliath), the Chanticleers were victorious because they were not thinking of themselves, but their coach and each other (2 Samuel 17:26-29).

The team demonstrated once again that with God, when you put others before yourself, unbelievable things can happen.

The writer is minister of the Myrtle Beach Church of Christ.

This story was originally published August 7, 2016 at 9:53 AM with the headline "Coastal’s national championship illustration of Biblical principle."