Harry Hillson is not an emotional person.

Over the past 20 years, I've watched Harry win numerous championships showing little more emotion than a quick smile.

So I was stunned last week when the Mountaineers long-time head baseball coach needed a moment to compose himself while speaking during the spring sports banquet.

Harry wanted to let everyone in the packed room know how he felt about this year's team captain. He told the hushed audience that the captain, who had played his final game as a Mountaineer three days earlier, was a great player but even a better person. He was the model Mountie.

Ryan Giblin, the son of Dorothy and Tom Giblin, was the captain of the 2008 Mountaineer baseball team. He is also one of the most well adjusted, nicest and humblest kids I've known at Mansfield.

I've never heard him cuss or complain and he still calls me Mr. McCloskey even after I've admonished him to call me Steve. He respects his opponents, his coaches, his professors and his elders.

Ryan is truly the type of kid every parent hopes their child will become.

It would be easy for Ryan to be stuck on himself, he literally has it all -- brains (he's an MU Presidential Scholar Athlete), athletic ability (a three-time All-PSAC East selection), boyish good looks and a quiet charm.

Of course if your last name is Giblin your baseball nickname has to be Gibby. This week Gibby was named the best shortstop in the PSAC. Not bad for a player who wasn't even recruited out of high school.

It's hard to believe now after watching him play every game at shortstop for the past three seasons that there wasn't a spot for Gibby during his freshman year.

"Coach Hillson talked to me about red-shirting my first year," explains the captain. "We had a great shortstop in Travis Wurster and I simply wasn't good enough to beat him out for a spot. I just wanted to be part of the team and whatever coach thought was good for the team was good with me."

Gibby sat behind Wurster (a four-time All-Conference selection) again the next season, appearing in just 23 games. But even then you could see something special in Gibby during his brief appearances.

He was a slick fielder with what seemed an almost effortless motion. He just looked like a baseball player should look.

He took over the starting spot at short in 2006 and has never been out of the lineup since. Gibby hit .357 that year, earning the first of his three All-PSAC East awards.

The next year Gibby was named All-Conference again after hitting .291 but he was disappointed that the team didn't make the playoffs and made a promise to himself they would during his senior year.

Last summer Gibby did get a championship ring after the Elmira Pioneers won the New York Collegiate Baseball League title. He was more confident than ever that the Mounties would be playoff bound in 2008.

At the end of his junior season, Coach Hillson called Gibby into his office. He was going to name the former unrecruited red-shirt as the team captain and wanted to explain the responsibilities that went along with the title.

"That was just a great day," remembers Gibby. "I couldn't believe that Coach Hillson had enough faith in me to trust me to be the captain."

With 11 new players on the roster, Hillson knew what he was doing in naming Gibby the captain.

"We needed a role model," explained Hillson. "Somebody the young guys to could look up to and emulate. Gibby's that guy. Everything he does from playing the game to fixing the field is done the right way with the right attitude and that's the example we wanted for our new guys to follow."

The team and Gibby worked hard on both their abilities and attitude during the offseason and it seemed to pay off. Going into the last two weeks of the season, the Mounties were regionally ranked and had seemingly locked up a PSAC playoff spot.

Heading into the final day of the season all they had to do was beat Bloomsburg. Mansfield had already beaten Bloomsburg twice earlier, and everything seemed to be falling in place.

But then the unimaginable happened. The Bloomsburg pitcher, who hadn't won a game all season, threw a gem and shut out the Mounties 1-0 and a 3-1 loss in the nightcap ended any hope for a playoff berth.

Not a word was said by anyone on the bus ride home. It would be days before the disbelief wore off. But even then it was the captain who set the tone.

"That was probably the lowest moment in my baseball career and I know everyone on the team felt the same way," Gibby said. "But you have got to give the pitcher from Bloomsburg a lot of credit; he was really on and threw a great game."

"We knew we had to win and everyone tried their best. Sometimes that's the way things go. Life isn't always fair but this team's going to be great next year and for a long time to come."

The Mounties will have a new shortstop next year, but they will be hard pressed to find a replacement for the captain.