Ole Miss fans flood The Grove to welcome CWS champion Rebels
OXFORD, Miss. (WCBI) – The celebration has not stopped since Brandon Johnson got that final out Sunday to bring home Ole Miss Baseball’s first national championship.
Hundreds of Rebels fans packed the Grove Monday to welcome home the 2022 College World Series Champions.
Mike Bianco and his national championship team stepped off the bus Monday afternoon and right onto the Walk of Champions, greeted by a sea of red and blue.
“Are you ready? Hell Yeah! damn right! Hotty toddy gosh almighty, who the hell are we?” chanted 1970 Ole Miss classmates Elisabeth Ely and Sissy and Clay DuQuesnay while they waited for the team.
The Grove was packed full of fans well ahead of the team’s arrival.
“Well, I couldn’t go to Omaha, so I figured this would be about the next best thing,” said 1974 grad Jeff Todd.
Todd has been waiting for a championship like this for a long time. Now it’s something he can share with his grandson Jack, who hoped to give his favorite player Tim Elko a high-five when he passed by.
Ole Miss grad student Lauren Wyton described the celebration in the Square Sunday night as “unreal.”
“I was at one of the local bars, I was in Funkys and as soon as they got that last out, everyone was throwing their beers everywhere, everyone was losing their minds,” she says. “It was incredible.”
She was one of the many Ole Miss fans buying brand-new national championship merchandise before heading to the Grove.
“I think we’ve got about 1500 units today and we have a second shipment actually coming tomorrow that’ll include more designs as well,” says Ginnie Brown, the store manager of B-Unlimited in Oxford. “The new shirts, they’ve been flying out of here ever since we opened.”
Plenty of fans say this is a championship that belongs to the entire state.
“I think it’s just a really big thing for Ole Miss and Oxford and Mississippi as a whole,” says Ole Miss freshman Belle Mitchell. “We all knew that they could do it but it’s kind of like a surreal moment too.”
The team will hold their championship parade followed by a celebration at Swayze Field on Wednesday.
