At Fort Lewis University, officials aren’t sure if the men’s soccer championship the Skyhawks won this year pushed the school’s other teams to achieve or if the achievement of the other teams pushed the men’s soccer team to the school’s first NCAA championship.

"We just came out of our most successful year, bar none, in all of our sports," said Fort Lewis Athletics Director Dave Preszler. "And part of that was momentum on both sides — momentum that all the sports programs brought to soccer and momentum that soccer brought to all the rest. It’s almost like a phenomenon."

When a team wins an institution’s first NCAA championship, the victory can affect the rest of the athletics program. Eight teams were able to bring an NCAA title back to their institution for the first time this year.

In the fall, the State University College at Geneseo, Appalachian State University and Fort Lewis tasted NCAA victory for the first time. The winter championships season brought first NCAA team trophies home to Winona State University, Virginia Wesleyan College and Fairleigh Dickinson University, Metropolitan Campus.

And this spring, Nebraska Wesleyan University and Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Camden, each saw sports teams celebrate the institution’s first national championship.

At Fort Lewis, the men’s soccer championship was part of something larger at the institution.

"You could literally watch success breeding success. You really saw it happening, saw the confidence — not cockiness, but maybe a little bit of a swagger," Preszler said. "It was a once-in-a-lifetime thing."

The young men’s basketball team was part of the mix, winning its fourth Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference West Division title in five years despite graduating six seniors last year. One of the assistant coaches told Preszler the success was "unbelievable."

"They think that just because it says Fort Lewis on their shirts, they’re supposed to win now," the coach told Preszler.

The student-athletes who brought the first championship to their institution were properly honored with parades and banquets, and receptions and banners proclaiming their titles draped across gymnasiums and athletics department offices.

Some winning teams even were the subject of proclamations from their state legislatures.

For some of the institutions celebrating their first national championship in the 2005-06 NCAA championship season, the victory was savored after years of falling just short of the title.

Appalachian State’s Division I-AA football team was one of those cases, said David Jackson, the school’s sports information director. When the 2005 season began, attendance figures soared because of all the anticipation surrounding the season.

"(Appalachian State) has had a program that has always been right on the cusp of achieving the trip to the championship game. But those of us who have been around for a while always wondered what it would be like, but the experience was beyond our wildest dreams," he said. "Then to actually win the game in a Southern Conference town — our own backyard — was pretty much out of this world."

Appalachian State feted its student-athletes upon their return from the championship game and into the next semester, honoring the team at a basketball game and holding a fund-raising banquet. The North Carolina state legislature passed an honorary proclamation.

But even now, months after the trophy came back to Boone, North Carolina, the effects are still rippling throughout the university.

"Alums are just so engaged in everything," Jackson said. "We’ve got people coming up to watch the guys work out. We’ve got signage up in town. It’s been a complete all-encompassing feeling on our campus. These student-athletes have had the unique experience of being able to have something they would have never thought possible. Because they won a game of that magnitude, it’s been able to do that for us."

Another team that finally made it over the championship hump after coming close for years was the Rutgers-Camden softball team. At that institution, the women’s teams have had more success than the men’s, sports information director Michael Ballard said. The women’s basketball team won the conference title a few years ago and earned the institution’s first spot in an NCAA tournament. The softball program began its string of successes three years ago, culminating with the national championship in May.

Ballard said some of the men’s teams are close — the soccer team lost the conference championship after seeing a goal called back, and baseball is "always close."

"It’s pretty neat when you see the little crawl on ESPN (the BottomLine) about national champions and there’s your team," Ballard said. "In fact, one of the (sports information directors) in the regional we hosted e-mailed me last week to say, ‘Congratulations on your title, I hadn’t even realized that you guys went on to win it until I saw it on ESPN,’ " Ballard said.

But as the championship luster wears off, many of the first-time victors already know it’s back to business as usual next year.

Winona State University sports information director Michael Herzberg said it wasn’t a week after the men’s basketball team won its championship before the ‘what have you done for me lately?’ refrain cropped up on his campus at a congratulatory banquet.

"They talked about the great ride that they had and, well, the ride is over and now it’s time for a new ride," Herzberg said. "That’s a natural thing. We only lose one player ... This is going to be great, and I think a lot of people are going to expect them to repeat."

Jackson at Appalachian State said the student-athletes already recognize it’s time to focus on the 2006 season.

"It’s been fun, and it’s been nice, and the rings fit well, but now it’s time to do it again," he said. "They’re trying the best they can to shut out all the extra attention and just do it again this year. I think the pressure to go out and do it again will be great on this group, as it always is for the defending champions."

The team is already preparing for its first home game of the season — against 2004 champion James Madison University.

"The student-athletes have done a fairly good job of understanding the magnitude of what they did and taking pause," Jackson said. "But they’re also tucking that away and saying, ‘Let’s go do that again.’ "

Ballard, still reveling in the spring championship, was more cautious with his expectations.

"It would be awfully nice to win another one, but at least we got one," he said. "They can’t take that away."