The game had ended nearly an hour earlier, but many Westminster High baseball players were still on the field.

As the lights dimmed at Ripken Stadium after Westminster's thrilling 8-7 victory over Severna Park for the Class 4A state championship May 27, players took extra time to celebrate the first undefeated season in school and county history.

Most of Westminster's 18-man roster will be on a baseball field again, playing in college or for the 2012 Owls.

But their coach is done.

For Bryan Harman, Friday's game was his last in a very familiar uniform.

After 10 years and two state titles, Westminster's longtime coach is retiring to spend more time watching sons Brett and Cody play college baseball.

Brett, who pitched a four-hit gem to give Westminster its only previous state championship in 2007, is a senior pitcher at the University of Maryland.

Cody, the starting catcher for this year's title team, will play at Frederick Community College next spring.

"When you have a chance to coach your kids, it's always a great experience," Harman said. "What makes it so special is that I was able to coach Brett in 2007, and his final game was the State Championship. And Cody, who was kind of in the shadows with his big brother having a lot of success, has been able to cut his own niche.

"It's pretty special to see my younger son accomplish what my older son did in our last game at Westminster."

Harman, himself a standout player for the Owls in the mid 1970s who returned to his alma mater as its head baseball coach 10 years ago, announced that he was retiring just as Westminster's postseason run began. He couldn't have picked a better season to say good-bye.

"We reached the top of the mountain," said Harman a few days after his Owls finished 23-0 and won their second state title in five years. "This team carried a bull's-eye on their backs from the start of the year. The more we kept winning, the larger the bull's-eye got.

"We committed only 24 errors in 23 games, which is unheard of. We also had really balanced pitching, with Brandon Taylor, Chad Diehl, Eric Dietz and Joey Braitsch. The pitching depth was really important when all the games got logjammed by the weather this spring."

'I took it to heart'

But the championship didn't come easily. In an early-season practice, Harman sensed the team was edgy and stopped the workout. He pulled his three team captains into Westminster's Physical Education Office for a discussion.

"All three echoed the same sentiment," Harman recalled. They said 'Coach, you're just pounding us and pounding us, and we're physically tired. It seems like you're unhappy.' I told them I wasn't unhappy, but just really focused. They asked me to back off and see what happens. I took it to heart."

Harman was driving his team hard because he realized its tremendous potential.

"I thought that would bring out the best in them," he said. "But if I had kept going, I don't think that would have worked. We started to shorten practice, incorporated some conditioning activities that were fun and even gave them some days off later on in the season.

"I was really appreciative that I had kids that could come and speak to me," he said, "and knew that I wasn't going to blow up at them."

Westminster dominated nearly every opponent on its way to the State Title Game. The Owls trailed in just two games all season, and never after the fourth inning. Their closest games were a 3-1 win over Frederick in the regular-season finale and a 4-2 triumph over Thomas Johnson in the Class 4A North region semifinals.

The Owls seemed headed to another lopsided win in the state championship game, when they held a 7-0 lead entering the fifth inning against a good-hitting Severna Park team.

But Westminster had to withstand a furious game-tying rally and won the championship on an infield single in the bottom of the sixth inning.

Even as they took a one-run lead into the top of the seventh, Harman and his team couldn't relax. Severna Park loaded the bases with two out, but junior reliever Diehl struck out the Falcons' best hitter to give Westminster the undefeated season and the championship.

"From the fifth inning on, there were a lot of peaks and valleys for both teams," said Harman, who posted a 160-55 mark in his 10 seasons at Westminster.

"It was as good a baseball game as it gets," he said. "Jim McCandless, the Severna Park coach, walked up to me at the end and said that we just gave about 1,500 people a game that they'll never forget. It was very rewarding."

The Owls and Class 3A state champion J.M. Bennett, of Salisbury, were the only schools in Maryland to accomplish an undefeated season this spring. Only 12 teams in the 37-year history of the state tournament have finished the season without a loss.

"Somewhere between game eight and game 10, we started believing that we really had a shot (to go undefeated)," said Harman. "Our mindset was 'we don't want to lose,' and that's the type of kid I want on my team. We never approached a game thinking that we weren't going to win."

The players' sense of purpose intensified in the championship game. After he got the final out, Diehl didn't talk much about his own performance. The junior focused on his determination to send Harman out with a title.

"This is unreal," said Diehl after the win. "I wouldn't let coaches Harman and (retiring assistant Guy) Stull go out with a loss, so I put everything in my body into that last pitch. It was the nastiest pitch I ever threw. I knew what I had to do, and I did it."

Home team advantage

Stull, who is also retiring after 37 years of coaching at the high school level, was glad that Harman talked him out of retirement four years ago after Westminster won the 2007 title.

"We've become like brothers over these last few years," said Stull, who was Harman's baseball coach in high school and also served as the best man at his wedding. "I'm glad I had the opportunity to coach with such a great fellow."

Now, Harman heads into retirement with two state titles highlighting his accomplished coaching career.

"There are some other things I would like to do," said Harman, a 1977 Westminster graduate who started playing baseball at the age of 7 and went on to star in baseball, football and basketball for the Owls.

"My family is greatly important to me, and that is the reason I am getting out. Nothing more, nothing less," he said. "I'll be spending a lot more time with my wife. I'm at the point right now that I was in 1993, when I finished coaching at Liberty (High) and the boys were starting Little League. Now they're in college, and I want to have that opportunity to see them play."

Harman knows that he will miss the game and his players.

"I thoroughly enjoyed coaching the game of baseball," Harman said. "It's pretty special when you get to come back and coach at your alma mater. It's special to work with someone like Guy Stull, who was my baseball coach here.

"I've been blessed to have a group of good, hardworking players who bought into the things that we tried to do as a team."