MURFREESBORO, Tenn. - While wrapped up in an embrace with assistant coach Joel Bradford after McCallie's 3-2 soccer win over Montgomery Bell Academy on Thursday, head coach Chris Cushenbery told him, "The curse is over!"
The Blue Tornado had to slay their own personal dragon to do it.
Montgomery Bell Academy scored the first and last goals of the Division II-AA title game, but McCallie scored three in between at the Richard Siegel Soccer Complex to earn the program's first state championship since 1999.
McCallie ends the season 14-1-4, the loss coming to Oak Mountain, the Alabama Class 7A state champion.
"The fact that we've gone down three years in a row in my time to MBA, luckily we had players looking to battle the entire time," McCallie senior midfielder Will McGregor said. "We believed we could do everything possible to win this game. This was our year.
"To leave McCallie on a win, it makes me feel good, and I'm happy for the rest of the players because they'll have more confidence going into next year, but this year was a culmination of hard work and dedication."
Cushenbery and Bradford went through a long spell of runner-up finishes, from high school football and soccer to college to even a runner-up finish for Cushenbery when he was an assistant with the Chattanooga Football Club. That makes this win that much sweeter for both.
McCallie has had four consecutive seasons end at the hands of MBA, including the last two in the state semifinals.
"It was great to get to play them in the final and get that opportunity to break that curse," Cushenbery said. "I really think some of that started in November, when we had 13 club players come up here (to Murfreesboro) and win state titles with club teams - 11 with Chattanooga FC and two with Nashville FC - but our kids came here and won and got that taste.
"Today they believed."
Even so, it was the Big Red who struck first, with Luke Bernatavitz punching a shot in from the left side of the box in the 14th minute. That lead lasted only two minutes, however, as Noah Tremain scored off a Drew Viscomi corner kick in the 16th minute.
The Northwestern-bound Viscomi finally gave the Blue Tornado the lead in the 45th minute on a hard strike from the left side into the corner of the net, and William Hart pushed the lead to 3-1 by corralling a long pass forward and tapping it past the goalkeeper, who had rushed out to try to make the save.
MBA cut the deficit to 3-2 in the 79th minute, but the Blue Tornado were able to hold on for the last couple of minutes to seal the victory.
"The whole game I was confident, from the get-go, but I wasn't quite there until the buzzer went off," Viscomi said. "I don't know if we were cursed, but it's definitely a weight off our shoulders. I like to think we were the best team in the state the past two years, but we could never quite get past MBA, so to get the ring today, it's a huge weight off our shoulders.
"I guess you could say the curse is over."
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @genehenleytfp.