Beat Utah State.

    All season long the Idaho State club baseball team had this as their goal — a tall task considering the Aggies were the defending National Club Baseball Association World Series champions.

    “Our biggest rival, our biggest challenge, happened to be last year’s World Series champion, Utah State,” said ISU head coach Bob Hunt, who just finished his fifth year with the Bengals. “In order for us to be able to go beyond our conference, to a regional opportunity, we had to beat Utah State.”

    And as if the NCBA schedule-makers gazed into a crystal ball and saw the future, the two teams were pitted against one another in the final weekend of the regular season for a three-game series at Halliwell Park — with the Northern Pacific South title and a berth to regionals on the line.

    All the hard-hitting Bengals had to do was win two out of the three games and they would knock off the champs and punch their own ticket to the postseason.

    It all went according to plan as Idaho State “punched the Aggies in the nose,” according to Hunt.

    Idaho State hammered its foe from Logan 14-1. The second game was closer, but ISU prevailed 5-4.

    “They’ve been our biggest competitors since I’ve been there,” said outfielder/pitcher Nate Mortensen, a senior from Rexburg whose brother, Clayton Mortensen, pitches for the Boston Red Sox. “We went into that weekend focused. We knew we needed to get those games to make it regionals.”

    The Bengals had done it. They were conference champions, much to the delight of the full house at Halliwell Park.

    “It was electric. I’ve never seen such a big crowd, ever,” Hunt said. “The stands were full. There were a lot of nerves. We all knew all year long that was the team we needed to beat to advance.”

    “It was a big relief. There was a lot of excitement,” Mortensen said. “It was incredible to think these guys (just) took the national title and we stole a regional spot from them.”

    The huge number of fans that came out to see the Bengals clinch their postseason berth was symbolic of how much popularity the team gained over the course of 24 games.

    Even though their season ended at the hands of Western Washington in the regional playoffs by a score of 2-1, the Bengals became the darlings of the NCBA world, a Cinderella that upset the mighty Aggies of Utah State.

    “That was one heck of a season we had,” Hunt said.

    Mortensen said key to the Bengals’ success was two-part: Great unity on the team and Hunt himself.

    “He’s put a lot of time and effort into the program,” he said. “We have a lot of respect for Bob and a lot of love. He’s put his heart into the program. We’re not a mess-around team. We’re a good program.”

    But the Bengals weren’t just a product of good coaching and effort — even though they have plenty of both. The talent existed in order to make their magical run happen.

    “We finally got all the tools in the shed that we needed to be able to fill the positions at every position,” Hunt said. “We didn’t have a weak spot on the field.”

    The team is comprised of mainly former junior college or NAIA baseball players who were looking for a fresh start, guys who didn’t want their collegiate careers to end and had loads of experience on the diamond.

    “They wanted to finish college, but they didn’t have an opportunity to play Division I somewhere and play that third or fourth year,” Hunt said.

    Idaho State was happy to accept them.

    Many players are from eastern Idaho, including the two seniors that Hunt and the Bengals will lose to graduation, Tory Hansen and Mortensen.

    Both players earned All-Region honors the last two years while Mortensen was an NCBA All-American last year and is a candidate to do it again this year.

    Hunt says he is sad to say farewell to Hansen and Mortensen. But when it comes to baseball, he thinks his team is stacked and ready for another run at the World Series.

    “We’re only losing two players this year, so we’re going to come back next year with a very solid, solid group,” he said. “We have guys that are going to fill their shoes handily.”

    “They’re only losing two guys. To me, they’re going to be strong next year,” Mortensen said.

    And Hunt is already dreaming of next season.

    “I cannot wait for September to roll around,” he said. “I’ve had kids contact me who are either transfers from other colleges or kids that are graduating this week and (are) wanting to come to ISU and play baseball for us.”