MARSHALLTOWN - One hit. Then another. And another.

Then another. A single. Another. One more.

Then ... a title.

A seven-hit, five-run fifth inning lifted Mid-Prairie past South O'Brien 7-3 and earned the Golden Hawks their first state title in the final baseball championship at Marshalltown High School.

"It's always been a goal of ours," senior Erik Christensen said, "but once it happens, it's indescribable."

When senior Brent Yotty struck out Adam Roth to end the game, the Mid-Prairie players celebrated with a huge pileup in the infield. The Golden Hawks completed their Class 2A state tournament run outscoring the opposition 33-11.

"This whole tournament, this whole year, we've been scoring runs," Yotty said. "We know we can put up runs at any time. It just takes that one guy, or two guys to get a hit, and everybody else feeds off that."

Down 3-1 to eighth-seeded South O'Brien, the Cinderella of the 2A field, the Golden Hawks were feeling frustrated after leaving the bases loaded in the second and third innings.

As the bottom of the fifth inning rolled around, with only nine outs left to make something happen, Mid-Prairie had cause to be a little jittery.

"There's always nerves in that situation," Mid-Prairie coach Brian Miller said. "But we've been there before. We knew if we just hung in there ... good things would happen for us."

Jed Seward led off the fifth with a single. Then with one out, Sean Thornton hit another single.

"We've been down before," senior Chris Driscol said. "We knew we'd come back and get some base hits. And everybody feeds off everybody. If somebody gets a hit, we're bound to get more that inning."

Boy, did they.

Driscol followed Thornton's single with an RBI single. Brent Yotty followed that with an RBI single to tie the game 3-3.

Dan Slaubaugh had the game-winning RBI with his single, and it was followed by RBI singles from Matt Wiles and Joel Fry to give Mid-Prairie a 6-3 lead.

In total, seven Golden Hawks had singles that inning. On the game, everyone in the lineup had a hit.

"All of these kids can contribute," Miller said. "That's what it's all about. It's a team game, and we kind of defined that here today."

South O'Brien brought Skyler Roder in to relieve Clark Egdorf on the mound, and Roder managed to end the onslaught by inducing a double play.

But the damage had been done; seven singles were hit and five runs scored.

"We knew it wouldn't be easy to hold them," South O'Brien senior Jon Roed said. "We've seen them hit the ball and we knew what we were still up against. We didn't get our hopes up too high."

The Wolverines, however, had looked like a team of destiny early in the game.

In the bottom of the first, South O'Brien right fielder Paden Roder threw out Layne Swartzentruber at home on a flyout by Christensen.

Then in the top of the second the Wolverines used three straight hits by Roth, Ben Eldridge and Dillon Griebel to plate one run, and three Mid-Prairie errors helped plate two more.

"You can't let anything like that affect you," Christensen said, "because it's the most important game we've ever played in, and you've got to know that anything can happen.

"And when it comes down to it, we can produce whenever we need to."

The Golden Hawks added one run when Swartzentruber singled and scored on a Wolverine error in the third inning. The unearned run was the only score against Roth, who entered the game with a 7.22 ERA. His coach Brian Wede pulled him after Roth gave up three hits and four walks over three innings.

"Roth was just flirting with disaster walking people," Wede said. "If he's just giving up free bases, it's hard to keep him in there."

South O'Brien had been flirting with disaster and destiny all season. The Wolverines started the year 3-8, and opened district play with a 14-13 record.

The eighth-seeded Wolverines shocked top seed Cascade 2-1 and beat Fort Dodge St. Edmond 3-2 to advance to the finals.

"We knew to move on, we had to take it one game at a time," Egdorf said. "We just kept winning until we couldn't play any more games, and then we played a good team in Mid-Prairie and they just hit the ball well."

South O'Brien (20-14) put two runners on in the top of the seventh inning, but Yotty struck out the side to end the threat and the game.

"(Brent's) probably not 100 percent physically, but you know, that kid's got a lot of guts," Miller said. "We rolled the dice with the best pitcher we had, and it was him."

Yotty pitched only three innings in the 14-2 quarterfinal win on Wednesday, but wasn't fully recovered for the state final.

"I wasn't as fresh as I could've been," said Yotty, who finished with a 10-4 record. "But with the state title on the line, I mean, you've got adrenaline going, and you bring everything that you've possibly got."

Playing well with the season on the line was what the 2004 Golden Hawks were all about. Mid-Prairie started the season ranked in the top 10, but hit a rough patch and fell off the statewide radar.

"We worked a little bit too hard for the conference title," Yotty said. "Once we got down on that, we just worked on playing our game."

By the time district play rolled around, the Golden Hawks were inspired again. And more importantly, they were hitting again.

"We had a little trouble at the end of the season producing more than five or six runs a game," Christensen said. "Lately, we've just been putting runs up."

Mid-Prairie won its last 11 games, and a 4-1 win over Columbus in the district opener was the closest game in the postseason. That was the last day most of the Golden Hawks shaved, too.

"I'm going to shave it right now," Christensen said, rubbing his almost three-week-old stubble. "Some people trimmed it up a little bit, but I let it go."

Christensen is one of seven seniors who won't be back to try to earn Mid-Prairie's third trip to state. Next year all classes head to Sec Taylor Stadium in Des Moines.

The Golden Hawks won their first title in what is likely the last-ever 2A tournament in Marshalltown.

"It's good to go out on top," Driscol said. "Everybody thought we'd never do anything. We proved them wrong. We've got a state championship."

South O'Brien 030 000 0 - 3 6 2

Mid-Prairie 001 051 x - 7 12 5

Adam Roth, Clark Egdorf (4), Skyler Roder (5) and Ben Eldridge; Brent Yotty and Chris Driscol. W - Yotty (10-4). L - Egdorf (6-7). 2B - Layne Swartzentruber (MP), Driscol (MP).