They still remember it like it was yesterday.

It was May 11, 2001.

The Rams were playing Alamogordo in the state semifinals, riding a 16-game winning streak. Brittany Burtner hit a deep fly ball that everyone thought hit a Tiger outfielder's glove and dropped over the fence.

Home run, right?

No. The men in blue ruled it a double, stifling a Rams rally, and the Tigers went on to win and advance to the championship.

The Rams then beat La Cueva the next day for third place, the green trophy and their best finish as of then.

A pair of teammates on that team have been "reborn" as Rams again.

Catcher Ashley Whittenberg and first baseman/outfielder Rachel Brenneman, who combined to drive in three of the Rams' runs in that unforgettable 7-5 loss at the Sportsplex, are toiling for coach Paul Kohman again.

Brenneman will begin coaching the softball team at Eagle Ridge Middle School next month, while Whittenberg is back for her second season coaching at the Mid-High.

They've been friends since they were fifth-graders at Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary, where Brenneman said she got the urge to someday be a teacher.

That dream came true in January, when she got a job as what she terms "a pull-out teacher" at Maggie M. Cordova Elementary. There, armed with a master's degree from Harding University in Searcy, Ark., she helps third-graders hone their math and reading skills. Her parents, Richie and June Ashburn, moved to Rio Rancho from Taylor Ranch, and Rachel enrolled at MLK.

Now, it's hard to tell which she loves more: teaching or softball, although she didn't play the game after graduation in 2001. And coaching, really, is one of the finest forms of teaching.

Not only Little League and RRHS teammates, Brenneman and Whittenberg were teammates on the New Mexico Sundancers, which enjoyed considerable success on diamonds around the state and throughout the country.

"We played a lot together as Sundancers - about five of us - so we already had that togetherness," she said, recalling the good times.

Brenneman, a first baseman and outfielder, says today she still recalls what she refers to as "Kohmanisms."

"I find myself thinking about them and actually using them in my classroom," she said. "I actually wrote a paper that had some of them in it."

One of her favorites was "Do one thing at a time. Do it well, and then move on to the next.

"I loved playing for Paul because he was real direct all the time ... and he told you how it was. He wouldn't tell you, 'Honey, it's OK.'"

She'll never forget her last game as a Ram.

"I went out with a bang: 4 for 4 and no errors," she said.

Nearly six years after the homer that was cut in half, "To this day we still talk about Brittany's hit; I was up after her and we thought we would rally. They even played the hit on the news."

"Paul e-mailed me; my parents told him I was coming back," she said, telling how she became "a Ram" again. "He asked if I'd be a coach for one of his seventh-grade teams. I said sure - I love the game."

Like Brenneman, Whittenberg also headed to college; two of them, in fact, attending Howard Junior College in Big Spring, Texas, for one year.

She broke a finger as a freshman, "a fluke accident - I caught a line drive wrong. Sophomore year, I went to (Abilene Christian University)," she said, lacking a pleasant relationship with her coach.

"It wasn't until my senior year that we started doing really good. We got some new coaches in," she said. "My sophomore year I basically split time at third; I didn't get a lot of catching time.

"In my junior year I was the starting catcher," she added. "Senior year we were co-conference champions. We went to the regional tournament."

College provided more fun, she said, than her days at RRHS.

"I loved the college atmosphere and there was just such a bigger emphasis on it," she explained. "In college, you're basically getting paid to play. If you don't perform, you don't get your scholarship, so the drive and motivation are there."

"I still envy those girls going to Bullhead," she said, having made three trips. "The competition was always a step up from New Mexico, and the traveling - we didn't get to travel a whole lot in high school."

Even more than the trip west, Brenneman said, was playing home games.

"There were the crowds we had; they were, like, our fans," she said. Winning a regional title in 2001 was another highlight.

Brenneman said she doesn't hear herself borrowing from Kohman's comments when she was playing.

"Some of them do look up to the fact I did go to college and when I was here I played all four years on varsity; that's big deal to these girls," she said.

Brenneman played T-ball with boys in the Cibola Little League when she was 5; then she shifted to softball, and was good enough by the age of 12 to play for the New Mexico Sundancers.

"God had blessed me with the ability," she said. She's also been blessed with an employer, TLC Plumbing and Utility, that lets her leave early most days to be with her team.

"I love being here," she said. "If my body would let me, I still would've been out there. I'm just getting old."

"They were good people to be around then and they are now," Kohman said, happy to have two ex-Rams back in the fold.