The jubilation it set off was months in the making, the players said.

“It’s huge,” second baseman Mike Wurster said. “We’ve just been dreaming about this all year—every practice, we’d be saying, ‘We need to be state champions.’ It finally paid off.”

That’s not to say it was a lock from the outset, though.

Cherry Hill fell behind in a hurry, as Gibbsboro scored a pair of runs in the first, including one on a controversial call on a double steal, then followed that with a run in the second and another in the third.

Meanwhile, the Stealers struggled to even get a hit—the players made plenty of contact, but didn’t get a man on first until Vinny Guckin’s single in the fourth. Guckin would end up scoring on Jake Thorndike’s single, the first sign of a breach in Gibbsboro’s defensive wall.

Meanwhile, Gibbsboro started to have trouble on offense, as Cherry Hill starter Jeff Dixon, who finished with five strikeouts, settled into a groove, despite having to switch catchers, after Sam Silverman came in for starter Jack Goan, who injured his catching hand.

“For some reason that always happen to me—I always let up runs early,” he said. “It definitely gets me angry. I want to go out and battle more, throw harder—I get a different mindset going.”

The Stealers would get another run in the fifth, when Wurster drove in Ryan Stainrook following Stainrook’s leadoff double, and tied it up when Guckin legged out an infield single to bring home Nick Falcone.

Falcone’s teammates went from a rumble to a jet engine roar from the dugout when he crossed the plate, as players tried to will Cherry Hill to the comeback.

“We just stayed up in the dugout—we kept the energy,” Thorndike said. “We’ve done that every game.”

That roar went from one engine to a whole fleet of jets when the Stealers took the lead in the eighth on Wurster’s improbable bases-loaded walk.

After going down in the count, 0-2, Wurster let three straight balls go by, fouled off a fourth, and watched as the fifth dipped low.

“I was so nervous—I was looking for a fastball down the middle, and he gave me one in the dirt,” Wurster said. “I was just trying to get something on the ground and score that run.”

The Stealers would get three more after that—two on passed balls and the third on a fielder’s choice—to pad the lead and give the team some breathing room heading into the home half of the inning.Though Gibbsboro’s Collin Fabio found his way on base via a walk, Dixon otherwise shut down the bats, inducing three ground balls to end it.

“This is awesome,” Dixon said, savoring the win. “I cannot wait to go to regionals.”

Cherry Hill will get close to a week off before having to worry about another game, with the Northeast Regional tournament slated to kick off Aug. 9 at South Windsor, CT, just north of Hartford.

Cherry Hill will play the Connecticut state champ to open that tournament, which includes teams from across New England.

“It’s icing on the cake at this point,” manager Andrew Hoffman said. “It’s great…this is my first state title, so this is pretty special.”