COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa — There’s hard work and dedication, and then there’s real sacrifice.

Both forms of selflessness rested in the 2009 College of Southern Idaho volleyball team, and both are major reasons why the Golden Eagles are queens of the junior college volleyball world once more.

In sharing a championship, they share a unique bond that can never be broken.

“We’re beyond sisters,” Samantha Misa said. “We worked hard together, put our faith in each other, and we got it.”

Volleyball is not war, but success requires many of the same principles: teamwork, selflessness, excellence and courage. Those attributes were evident in the starters for this CSI team. Others rested well below the surface.

Before the tournament started, CSI head coach Heidi Cartisser talked about sending Jessica Peacock home from her American experience a champion. The Australian international will leave at semester’s end, and she’ll do so a champion and a national tournament MVP.

She could have gone on to a four-year school, but it would have meant more coursework when she got back to Australia anyway, so she’s leaving now instead to get a head start.

Peacock knew this semester would be her last at CSI before she even came back. The hope that she’d touch the championship trophy on a Saturday night in Council Bluffs, she said, was only reason she still got on the plane despite needing shoulder surgery for the better part of a year previous to that. She needed it before she even got to Twin Falls but refused to contemplate it until the mission was achieved.

“I feel complete,” Peacock said Saturday after the Golden Eagles won the title. “It’s all worth it because we won, and because I have a new family here that I’ll never forget.”

Peacock’s understudy, Alex van Dyke, was caught in a numbers game and couldn’t find meaningful floor time all year. Yet she was the first one running down the line after just about every point, leading the cheers and exhorting her team.

She was one of the team leaders despite rarely playing, helping lead stretches and exercises, among other things.

“If I have to be the cheerleader, get the water, whatever,” van Dyke said. “I was picked by the coaches to be on this team, and this is something that I’ll have for the rest of my life. We’re champions, and they can’t ever take that from us.”

Danielle Dean got one year to play at CSI. She’s listed as a freshman, but two years at BYU-Idaho means her JUCO eligibility is now exhausted. Chauncee Axelson, a Hagerman alum, came home after a year of basketball at Blue Mountain Community College (Ore.). She’s got a year of eligibility left, if she decides to exercise it.Charelle Minor and Ashleigh Pollard, both freshmen sitting out on a redshirt, worked tirelessly in practice.

The supporting cast did its job, pushing the starters to be even better than they were. It was all in the goal of being hailed in the CSI athletic halls for a lifetime.

“I told the team before the match that everything we do is to sustain a team’s life-span,” Cartisser said. “I told them if they win a national championship, the team never dies. It goes on forever. It’s a legacy.”

Champions never die. Champions are honored in the halls of whatever school they represent, well after they’ve moved on.

Each of this flock of Golden Eagles is a champion in every sense of the word, Cartisser said.

And champions are immortal.

David Bashore may be reached at dbashore@magicvalley.com or 208-735-3230.