The most important position in team sports is pitcher in softball.

Which is why the story of Messiah College's national championship season began when Jessica Rhoads' Dad got sick.

Rhoads was one of the best high-school pitchers in Pennsylvania in 2007, for Northern High School in York County.

Her recruiting choice came down to Messiah, a school she loved and program she was familiar with, or the University of Hartford, which was offering a full Division I scholarship.

The full ride won. Messiah figured to keep winning, as it has for years under veteran coach Amy Weaver. It did not figure to crash the national Division III stage, as so many Messiah teams do annually in soccer and field hockey and most everything else.

Then Rhoads' Dad got sick. The night before she left for Hartford, Jack Rhoads was hospitalized with abdominal pain that turned out to be a bleeding spleen, and immediate surgery.

Jessica schlepped to Hartford anyway. The surgery went well, supposedly. But the next time she saw him, he was 50 pounds lighter than the softball-obsessed dynamo she remembered.

Jessica spent two miserable weeks at Hartford before coming home. She enrolled at Messiah last fall, and Jack Rhoades passed away, from cancer, in February, a few days before the just-completed season was about to begin.

Thus a turning point, in Messiah's season this came before the games even started.

"That was definitely a defining moment," Tori Hatt, a Donegal grad and one of Messiah's co-captains, said Thursday.

"We had to be a family for her."

A butt-kicking family. The Falcons realized they might be on to something when they won their first six games by a combined 58-0.

They went 43-4 overall, out-scoring their opponents 245-64.

Two of the losses came early, in Florida. Two others came in two doubleheaders over three days in late March/early April.

They were undefeated after April 2, a stretch of 23 straight. In eight NCAA tournament games, they allowed exactly four runs.

It really was a team effort. The co-captains had weekly meetings with Weaver, during which they stressed the importance of using the entire roster.

"It's important for everybody to get in," Hatt said. "We talked about that all the time — we want everybody to get experience."

Literally everybody on the roster saw action, and 12 players started 19 games or more.

Hatt, who started 24 times in right field, is one of three Lancaster Countians on the roster, along with Ashley Lehman, a freshman from Lancaster Mennonite who started 22 games, and Jessica Brown, a freshman from Warwick who started six games.

There was one very scary moment. It came in the semifinals of the Commonwealth Conference playoffs.

The Falcons were an out away from a 5-1 win over Lebanon Valley when a line drive nailed Rhoads on her pitching hand.

She left the game, replaced by junior pitcher Megan Rice, and LVC tied it. Messiah scored in the bottom of the ninth to win 6-5.

The Falcons won the final, 10-4 over Widener, without Rhoads. Rice allowed four runs in the first inning before settling.

A loss in either game would have ended the season.

"That was very shaky," Weaver said. "We knew then that our team could pull together whether we had our ace or not.

"That was our moment. We were pretty confident after that."

Rhoads' injury was just a bruise. Five days later, when the NCAAs started, she was, you might say, ready.

In the national semifinal, against Coe College, she struck out 19 (in a 7-inning game, remember) and hit a two-run homer to account for all the scoring.

In the final, also against Coe, she whiffed 13 in a two-hitter. That game was also 2-0.

Rhoads finished the year 28-1 (Gettysburg beat her 5-2 nearly two months ago) with an 0.49 earned-run average and, in 198 innings, 364 strikeouts and 47 walks.

She's a freshman. Messiah finished the year with no seniors on the roster.

"It's kind of exciting to have the entire team back next year," Hatt understated.

It's exciting to be part of athletics at Messiah, which also won national championships in men's and women's soccer this school year.

The men's soccer team has won six of the last nine Division III national titles, and been to eight of the last nine Final Fours.

Women's soccer has won it all twice, and reached six of the last seven Final Fours. Field hockey has never won it all, but been to seven national finals and 12 Final Fours, including this year's.

Softball has some catching up to do, and might be capable of doing it.

"I don't know that there's a main secret," Weaver said.

"Everybody here puts in a lot of extra hours. It's a contagious thing. I wanted to be where [the other Messiah teams] are."

Referring to the fact that Christianity is so central to life at Messiah, Weaver added that, "There's a certain kind of kid that wants to come here."

"A lot has to do with our family dynamic," Hatt said.

"God is the centerpiece of our team."

God and, of course, pitching.