No one remembers the first time Mary Hardin-Baylor wore its gold jerseys in an NCAA Division III playoff game. However, everyone who attended the Crusaders’ 2016 national championship game against Wisconsin-Oshkosh knows when those gold jerseys became magical.

“It started because the jerseys tend to fit a little tighter when there’s no color in them, so our kids really hated the white uniform because they fit tighter,” Harmon said. “We’ve traveled a lot in the playoffs, and everyone wears dark jerseys. We wore the gold jerseys in our first national championship game, and the championship gold has since become a rallying cry for our team.”

“Our equipment manager at the time was Chad Widmer, and he proposed that we wear the gold jerseys for the 2016 national championship game,” former UMHB head coach Pete Fredenburg said. “We won that game and started having success in the playoffs in those jerseys, so we became attached to them.”

UMHB has won three national championship games wearing gold jerseys, even if the NCAA doesn’t officially recognize the 2016 victory. As any member of those teams will tell you, it took more than just gold jerseys to win a national title.

“We’ve won a few championships in those gold jerseys. We’ve been very fortunate, and all the credit goes to those gold jerseys,” Fredenburg said with a laugh. “We’ve had so many great coaches and players that have been a part of those championships. We’ve been very fortunate at Mary Hardin-Baylor.”

After searching through photographs, the first time UMHB wore gold jerseys in a playoff game was in the first round of the 2015 NCAA DIII playoffs against rival Hardin-Simmons. In that game, Cru avenged a 29-26 loss to the Cowboys during the regular season with a dominating 37-19 victory. The Crusaders wore the gold jerseys in their second-round win over Huntingdon that season before falling in the quarterfinals to Linfield while wearing gold jerseys and pants.

However, the combination of gold jerseys and pants has historically been more successful for UMHB in the playoffs. That’s not to say there isn’t some magic when the Cru don the gold jerseys with either white or purple pants. The Crusaders are 13-3 when wearing the gold jerseys with white or purple pants in playoff games since 2015.

But those gold jerseys and pants hold a different level of playoff magic. When wearing the all gold combination, the Cru is 11-1 all-time in the playoffs, including a 3-0 mark during the 2024 postseason. 

Johns Hopkins will likely see those gold uniforms when their quarterfinal playoff game starts at 11 a.m. Saturday on ESPN+. It will be the first time the Blue Jays have seen the gold uniform, considering the two schools have never met on the gridiron, which Harmon said is both positive and negative.

“It creates some excitement, but there’s also some anxiety because I don’t know Johns Hopkins very well. So, we’re scrambling. We worked late last night and came in early this morning trying to figure out who these guys are and what they’re about. I would prefer to play somebody we’ve played before from a scheme standpoint because then you know the personality and mentality of that opponent. We don’t know (the mentality) yet of Johns Hopkins, but we’re working hard to figure that out.”

The Cru’s run through this postseason has brought back memories of the 2004 squad, which won four consecutive road contests before losing to Linfield in the national championship game – they wore white in that game, the program’s only title appearance until 2016. Like this year’s run, UMHB opened the playoffs against Trinity and Hardin-Simmons.

“The thing that’s been amazing about this team is their resilience,” Fredenburg said. “The coaches make travel fun, and the players enjoy the traveling. As hard as it seems to play on the road, the reality is the team is together. They love to be together and enjoy the prospects of traveling and the opportunity to see different parts of the country while playing the game they love.”

One word of warning to Blue Jays fans: please don’t refer to the uniforms as yellow. UMHB takes offense to that, and the Cru is already a tough team to beat in the playoffs, so there’s no need to add fuel to their fire.

“Someone once asked if we were going to wear our yellow jerseys,” Fredenburg said. “We wear gold jerseys.”

“People will call them yellow, and that has always struck a nerve with us,” Harmon said. “We call it championship gold, and we always want to be in our gold in the playoffs.”