The Vermont men's soccer team's rise to the collegiate mountaintop started with an arts and crafts project.
The Catamounts manifested their goals through replica trophies created by one of the players, which they carried with them everywhere they went -- first an America East regular-season trophy mockup, then an America East tournament one, then a reconstruction of the NCAA tournament trophy.
"The other two, we destroyed," said coach Rob Dow, "but this national championship one, we've kept. It's grown on us."
The Catamounts upgraded their replica trophy to the real one on Monday, when junior Maximilian Kissel bagged the golden goal in overtime of the NCAA championship game against Marshall, capping Vermont's spectacular run to its first national team title in men's soccer.
Nothing came easy for Vermont, the No. 17 team in the country entering the NCAA tournament, which had to run a gauntlet of higher-ranked teams and often did so in dramatic fashion.
A 5-0 home win over Iona to open the tournament was just about the only straightforward win of the Catamounts' run. The reward was a second-round date with No. 7 Hofstra on the road, where the Pride were unbeaten in 22 consecutive home matches and where Vermont's flair for the dramatic began.
Having held a 1-0 lead for much of the game after Yaniv Bazini's goal in the seventh minute, the Catamounts finally cracked in the second half when Hofstra capitalized on some chaos in the box and bundled home an equalizer.
Just 51 seconds later, Vermont junior David Ismail produced the goal of the tournament -- and perhaps the men's college season -- to put the Catamounts back ahead for good. Defender Zach Barrett chipped a pass into the box for Ismail, who flicked it over his head with his right heel and fired a first-time volley into the bottom corner.
"[Barrett] played me the ball a little bit higher," Ismail explained, "and I took a good touch and thought, why not shoot?"
Goals from Bazini (born in Israel) and Ismail (Germany) were fitting for a team with so much international influence. Vermont has 12 international players, from as nearby as Montreal and as far as Hong Kong.
The "Cardiac Cats" moniker truly stuck after a third-round trip to San Diego, which finished scoreless after regulation and sent Vermont to overtime for the first time -- but certainly not the last -- in the NCAA tournament.
That one didn't take long to settle, as first-year forward Ryan Zellefrow was hacked down in the box just 30 seconds into OT. While hearts raced elsewhere, particularly on TV screens back in Burlington, Vt., nobody was cooler than Bazini, who sent the goalkeeper the wrong way and sent Vermont to the quarterfinals.
"This guy's got ice in his veins," Dow said. "There was no doubt."
Then came the toughest test: a trip to face No. 2 Pittsburgh, one of the favorites for the national title, and where it seemed the clock would surely strike midnight on the Vermont's Cinderella story. Instead, the Catamounts knocked off the Panthers, 2-0, on goals from Kissel and Bazini to reach the College Cup for the first time.
The drama reached a fever pitch in the Final Four, where Vermont was six minutes away from a 1-0 elimination at the hands of No. 3 Denver. Bazini, however, had scored in every NCAA tournament game and wasn't letting that streak go, chesting down a lofted ball from Nathan Siméon (of Canada) and finishing a dramatic equalizer.
The semifinal couldn't be decided in regulation, nor in overtime, and went to penalty kicks. The Catamounts were perfect from the spot, converting all four of their attempts, while goalkeeper Niklas Herceg (of Germany) made a crucial save that took Vermont to its first national championship game.
At this point, the eyes of the soccer world and beyond were fixed on the "Cardiac Cats," who seemingly only knew one way to get things done on this run. So when the Catamounts trailed Marshall with less than 10 minutes to go, it was little surprise when they did it again, with a beautiful give-and-go between Ismail and Marcell Pap (of Hungary), seeing the latter fire home an equalizer to keep Vermont alive.
Kissel had a chance to win it in the final minutes of regulation, as he got in behind the Marshall back line with six minutes to play, sold his defender with a fake, and placed his shot just inside the far post. But Herd goalkeeper Aleksa Janjic made a stunning save to send the game to OT.
"I was pretty much in disbelief when [Janjic] saved it," Kissel said. "But you just have to keep going, that's our mentality. Don't stick to the past, move forward."
The first 10-minute overtime went by without a goal, as did the first half of the second, as the final looked headed for penalties. But then Barrett hit a long pass for Kissel to contest with the lone Marshall defender, and Kissel won it, leaving him one-on-one with the goalkeeper. The German striker didn't give Janjic a chance to make a save this time, dribbling across the box and rolling home the most important goal the program will ever score.
The commentary on ESPN said it all: "Don't call them Cinderella! You can call them national champs!"
All sorts of history was made when Kissel's winner crossed the line: Vermont's first national title in men's soccer, the university's first NCAA championship in any team sport, the first unseeded team to win the men's title in 18 years, the list goes on.
"'Vermont, national champions' -- it doesn't come off the tongue easily," Dow said. "We're not fully funded with scholarships. We don't have Alston money. We don't have NIL budget. What's most important is your team's culture, and it's a family, and they work harder than everybody else, and you have enough talent to win big games.
"You put that all together, and what people think of us, and what Vermont can do ... I think the 'Ted Lasso' response is: believe. Believe."
The Catamounts returned to Vermont as heroes Tuesday with a police escort from the airport, drivers getting out of cars in Burlington to cheer them on, congratulations from US Senator Bernie Sanders on X, and a real championship trophy instead of a replica.
But for Dow, at the end of the most eventful, exhausting, and memorable fortnight of his life, he was just excited to get home and see his wife, Loren, and their two-week-old son, born just before the team departed for that third-round game in San Diego.
"It's all been a lot, but I'm super glad to get back home and just spend a lot of quality time ... It's been hard, yeah. But worth it."