Improved Aggies head back to NCAA tournament afteremotional championship

GREENSBORO, North Carolina — Ben Hall tells the story with a poker face, his eyes hidden behind dark, wraparound sunglasses. They shield the sun, but they also don’t give away his feelings.

Feelings that run deep. Feelings that bubbled up to the surface on the last day of the MEAC baseball tournament in Hall’s hometown of Daytona Beach, Fla.

Tie game. Bottom of the eighth inning. N.C. A&T one victory away from the promised land.

Zach McLean’s one-out double drives home burly Dawnoven Smith with the go-ahead run, opening the floodgates on a four-run rally and A&T’s first MEAC championship in 13 long years.

“It’s hard to put into words how special this year has been,” Hall says on a sunny afternoon at practice at Memorial Stadium. “When we were in the eighth inning down there in Daytona and we took the lead, I got emotional in the third-base box, right in the middle of coaching.”

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