MURFREESBORO, Tenn. - From his first day as McCallie's new baseball coach, Tim Costo's daily message was the same.
"It's a process," he hammered home.
The Blue Tornado plugged away, hearing Costo's message even in their dreams, and the process carried through to Tennessee's Division II-AA championship game Thursday.
McCallie lost 6-5 to Brentwood Academy at Middle Tennessee State University's Reese Smith Field, coming up two runs shy of accomplishing the improbable.
"We started out really rough at the beginning of the season and I didn't think we'd come this far, but we worked our tails off in practice, made a whole lot of progress and we made it here," McCallie's John Behrends said.
"No one expected us to be here," added fellow pitcher and outfielder Corbin Brooksbank. "Yeah, we just lost this final game, but I'm proud of these guys and I look forward to coming back and watching them compete. McCallie baseball is in a good place right now."
The team was in a good place early Thursday afternoon, grabbing a 1-0 lead and then seesawing with the Eagles. After losing the lead, the Blue Tornado struck for three runs in the bottom of the third to go back up 5-4. However, Brentwood Academy rallied for two in the top of the fourth, and that was the last of the scoring.
"We competed," Costo said. "We made a couple of mistakes early, but we came back and played well."
After beating Briarcrest Christian 5-1 in Wednesday's losers-bracket final that ended after midnight Eastern time, McCallie ended the season 22-15-1.
"I'm disappointed for the kids the way this one ended, but I know that we came together the last few weeks and developed into this unbelievable baseball team, and I'm really proud of them for that," Costo said. "Only one team gets to end with a 'W,' and unfortunately we weren't that team."
Ethan Bain was 2-for-4, scoring a run and knocking in two, and Cameron Costo and Dane Beard each was 2-for-3 for McCallie.
Contact Ward Gossett at wgossett@timesfreepress.com or 423-886-4765. Follow him on Twitter @wardgossett.