CLEVELAND, Tenn. — The plan was for the whole team to jump in the ocean, but tide warnings prevented the Lee University Lady Flames from celebrating their NAIA national soccer championship that way last Saturday night at Daytona Beach, Fla.

An Outback meal on coach Matt Yelton had to suffice.

The Lady Flames didn't get to fly back to a crowd waiting at the home airport, either, but an enthusiastic group did greet them when they completed their drive home to the campus Sunday evening. Other Lee athletes, a small group of loyal fans and a number of teachers and members of the school administration were there, including athletic director Larry Carpenter and Dr. Paul Conn.

Conn had gone to Daytona Beach for the quarterfinal match when the Lady Flames needed a penalty-kick shootout but finally got past their old national-tournament nemesis, Martin Methodist.

After the welcome home, it was time to concentrate on final exams. The team had left for Florida on Nov. 28, and most of the players had plenty of studying to do during their off days from three wins at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.

“I know a lot of players choose to play (NCAA) Division I soccer for the notoriety,” Yelton said Thursday, “but one of the things I like about the small-college atmosphere is that the players like to compete but they really play because they love it — not to get attention.

“And I feel we can compete with several Division I programs out there that are very successful.”

Yelton has many friends coaching in NCAA programs, and his brother got a 10-year contract to stay at Samford just before the Birmingham school joined the Southern Conference this year. A lot of those people helped fill his voice-mail and e-mails after last Saturday's triumph, but he said it also meant a lot that many of his players and their parents from club teams he coaches in Chattanooga also sent messages of some kind.

The Lee players also were loaded with texts and other means of congratulations, they said, and they're getting a banquet from the school next semester and in February will be honored along with Pat Summitt's Lady Vols at the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame ceremony in Nashville.

The luster of their accomplishment will last quite a while, in other words, even if there was no ticker-tape parade or visit to the White House. But the Lady Flames are so used to working for their success that they can't help themselves.

“On our way home on the bus, we started saying, ‘Now next year ...,’ and we had to tell ourselves to stop and enjoy this,” junior defender Kristine Tuck said.

Tuck played one year at Lee with her sister, Rachel, who was a junior when the Lady Flames lost to Martin Methodist in the 2005 NAIA final, and she was a 2008 all-tournament player along with two sets of sisters: twins Christiane and Linn Christensen from Oslo, Norway, and junior Jenna Achten and freshman Jamie Achten from Centennial High School in Franklin, Tenn. The younger Achten led the team with 21 goals and 20 assists, including one of each in the final win over Concordia (Ore.), but she gives credit to her sister and other teammates for setting her up.

Even closer-to-home players such as Cleveland residents Savannah Neely and Lauren Good were part of the 2008 success, but the contributors were widespread in background. Switzerland was represented in freshman Sandra Kaelin, who scored Lee's first two goals in the semifinal win, and Brazil still had a strong presence even with former NAIA player of the year Janaina Novaes departed and her sister Luana out with a broken leg, as Marina Lima came off the bench to spark the offense in the final with the older Achten out with a left ACL tear.

“I felt we had the best team and the deepest team there,” Yelton said, “and I told the girls going in that the only team that could put us out was us. They were unbelievably focused.

“This team has overcome a lot of adversity this year because even with all their different backgrounds and cultures they blended like a family, and they covered for each other like a family.”

The sister combinations are only part of the family atmosphere, then, but they also show a strength of Yelton's recruiting. If big sister doesn't like a program, little sister likely isn't going to follow.

Yelton finished work on his 2009 class weeks ago but has spent much of this week on future recruits. And he has no desire, he said, to go anywhere else.

“They take care of us. Lee’s a great place to work for,” he said. “The community you get to work with — the other coaches — we are very good friends, and Coach Carpenter is an absolutely fantastic boss. Dr. Conn and our administration is very supportive of athletics here, and that makes a big difference.”

E-mail Ron Bush at rbush@timesfreepress.com

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