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GETTYSBURG, Pa. – The Gettysburg College baseball team will make its third appearance in the Centennial Conference (CC) Championship Tournament this weekend, but this year's event will carry extra significance for one simple reason:

For the first time ever, the Bullets will host a conference tournament game.

Kirchhoff Field will be the site on Friday, when second-seeded Gettysburg takes on third-seeded Haverford College in a first-round game starting at 3 p.m. In the other opening-round game, top-seeded and sixth-ranked Johns Hopkins University will host fourth-seeded Franklin & Marshall College.

The double-elimination tournament will continue on Saturday and Sunday at Johns Hopkins. The tournament winner receives an automatic bid in the NCAA Division III playoffs.

Gettysburg enters the playoffs with a head of steam, having won 13 of 14 games following Tuesday's win over Lancaster Bible College. Heading into Wednesday's regular-season finale with Messiah College, the Bullets (28-11, 13-5 CC) had tied the school record for victories.

Only once in program history is Gettysburg known to have played on its home grass in the postseason – when the 2001 squad hosted the ECAC Southern Region Tournament. That year, the Bullets defeated Frostburg State University 6-2 before falling to Alvernia University 7-6 in the championship game.

Gettysburg is making its first postseason appearance since 2007, when it finished 1-2 in the Centennial Conference Tournament. The Bullets lost their only game in the 2005 CC playoffs.

“We start from day one with the goal of winning a conference championship,” said Gettysburg Head Coach John Campo. “The first step is you need to make the conference playoffs. And obviously the higher your seed the better your opportunity, especially if you are hosting the tournament or hosting a first-round game.”

The Bullets have played well at home this year, where they are 12-3 and have won their last nine games.

“It's a great reward for the players,” added Campo. “They get to play in front of their home crowd, there's a lot of excitement, and they've earned that.”

Three games will be played at Johns Hopkins on Saturday, with the championship game(s) held on Sunday.

“Pitching and consistent level of play,” said Campo, on the keys to a successful tournament. “And if you can stay in the winner's bracket, you have an advantage. It doesn't mean that teams can't win it out of the loser's bracket, but it's a tougher haul because you have to win an extra game and have to go a little deeper into your pitching staff, and come back on Sunday and beat somebody twice.”

Six games into its Centennial Conference schedule, the Bullets found themselves 2-4 in league play after dropping four straight. But the team rallied to win 11 of their final 12 conference games and according to Campo, a number of factors played into the team's strong finish, including a pitching staff that tossed a complete game in its final seven conference outings.

“I'm real proud of the leadership of our team,” he said. “After that four-game bump that we had, we had a real uphill battle to get into the playoffs. But to get on the run that we did is a tremendous accomplishment. The fact that our pitching staff has been giving us a lot of complete games is huge too, and there's a toughness and bulldog mentality to that.

“We've also been getting a consistent level of play defensively, and we've had some timely offense. So the three phases of the game have come together, along with solid leadership, and I'd like to specifically point out our seniors and our captains. All of them did a great job keeping us focused on the opportunity that we had.”