Taylor Closes Historic Season as National Runner-Up

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LEWISTON, Idaho – For the first time in school history, No. 1 Taylor played for the national championship but the Trojans' historic run to the title game of the 2026 Avista NAIA World Series fell short.

Top-ranked and top-seeded Taylor (56-7) saw its season end Saturday with a 21-3 result against eighth-seeded, No. 16 Tennessee Wesleyan (49-15) before a crowd of 2,219 at Harris Field. The final matchup was the Trojans' sixth game on the Lewiston stage during the World Series, where Taylor went 4-2 across a deep and demanding run to the championship round.

It marked just the fifth meeting between the two highly successful programs and the second during postseason play, with a previous matchup in the 2013 NAIA Opening Round in Kingsport, Tennessee.

Three Trojans earned spots on the World Series All-Tournament Team, following the conclusion of the title game including Brayden Manning and Sam Gladd, with each honored for the second time in their careers, and they were joined by Lane Lewis. Lewis, pitching on two days' rest, made his third appearance of the World Series as the starting pitcher Saturday night, a fitting reflection of the resolve that carried TU through the bracket.

Manning's bat stayed hot to the very end. His double down the left-field line in the third extended his hitting streak to 22 games and his on-base streak to 41 — a stretch of consistency that anchored the Purple & Gray lineup all season.

Brennan Frickel led off the fourth by going deep for his 11th home run of the season, a solo shot that put the Trojans on the board. They answered again in the fifth, when Ben Kennedy and Luke Sutter both came around to score on a Manning RBI groundout and a Jordan Malott double down the left-field line, cutting the margin to 11-3. Kennedy finished with a team-best two hits after leading off the game with a single on the game's first pitch.

The Trojans kept battling into the late innings, loading the bases with one out in the seventh as they looked to chip away but couldn't swing the momentum. TU also fell victim to an uncharacteristic and season-high five defensive errors.

Despite the result, the national championship game appearance closed the book on a senior class that rewrote the program's standard. Over four years, the senior group compiled a 187-51 record — a .786 winning percentage — and leave Taylor having reached the sport's biggest stage in Lewiston, twice. The run also featured a four-peat in Crossroads League Regular Season Championships, and three-peat in CL Tournament titles.

Along the way, the 2026 Trojans rewrote the program record book. The team set single-season standards for wins (56), winning percentage (.889), batting average (.350), on-base percentage (.471), slugging percentage (.588), hits (716), runs (690) and home runs (105).