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Those pleasant visions came with good reason.
After all, the Bucs returned six starters from that PIAA Class A championship team. Three of them - pitcher Kiersten Conwell, catcher Colby Miller and rightfielder Kayla Briggs - were first-team All-State selections.
That made Chartiers-Houston as talented as any team in the classification. Heck, it's a roster some larger classification schools would envy.
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No matter what Chartiers-Houston did - and it won its eighth WPIAL championship during a 26-game win streak that dated back to last year's state playoffs - those expectations were completely unfair.
Not that the Bucs minded them.
"A lot of people assume we'll get there, and that's a good thing," Chartiers-Houston coach Tricia Alderson said.
It comes with the territory with a program that's won as much hardware as Chartiers-Houston softball has over the years. Peters Township boys soccer and Canon-McMillan wrestling know the feeling.
The argument here is that repeating as a champion in sports such as soccer and wrestling are actually easier than baseball or softball.
Not that any championship repeat comes easily, but no sport faces as many uncontrollable obstacles as baseball and softball.
Say a ball hits a small rock in the infield, takes a funny hop and leads to the only run of a state playoff game. It can happen. What if the ace pitcher runs a fever? Maybe the third baseman slips on a routine grounder.
Those elements, and so much more, makes continually winning at a high level in high school baseball and softball incredibly difficult.
"It's very hard to get back," Alderson said after her Bucs lost a heartbreaker, 3-2, to Clarion in the PIAA Class A semifinals Monday. "You can't assume anything with any team."
Even Chartiers-Houston, which took a 22-0 record into the semifinals.
That loss, however, takes nothing away from the Bucs' incredible accomplishments.
Though it came up short in becoming just the second local team - joining the 1998 Carmichaels Mighty Mikes - to complete an undefeated season, Chartiers-Houston accomplished everything with the burden of outside expectations.
That's a tough thing to do, especially for a group of teenagers.
And Chartiers-Houston will go down as one of the all-time great baseball or softball teams from this area.
"They have nothing to hang their heads about," Alderson said. "They had a good season. When you don't accomplish the main goal you set for the year, it sucks, but they came close."
Mike Kovak can be reached at mkovak@observer-reporter.com
