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A roller-coaster season of extremes finished on a high for the Hustlers on Monday night with their third Goulding Park Monday Night championship in the past four years.

In somewhat chilly conditions — you can see in the accompanying photo that many of them were quick to don their jackets in the aftermath — the Hustlers defeated the Trappers 12-7, breaking open a close game with five runs in the third inning.

It was the middle of the order doing most of the damage in this one as Dave Morgenstern and Kasey Wong each went 3-for-3 with three runs scored and two RBIs. Jamie Good followed them in the order with another 3-for-3 effort and an RBI.

Though many believed, early in the season, that the Hustlers weren’t as bad as they looked, the new champs nonetheless staggered out of the starting gate with just one tie and five losses in their first six games. They finally hit the win column on June 15 by beating both the Jays and Hogs, but then fell back by losing their next four.

Enter July, however, and the Hustlers found their groove for good, rattled off 10 consecutive wins and finished the regular season 12-1-1, losing only to the Hogs on Aug. 10, ending an eight-game losing streak for the defending champs.

In the post-season, the Hustlers’ playoff mettle shone through with wins over the Trappers (twice) and the Hogs.

The championship game turned out to be somewhat anti-climatic following a nail-biting semi-final that had to go extras.

In a closely played contest that saw four lead changes, the Jays rallied from a four-run deficit in the fifth inning to take a 9-8 lead on Kevin Halford’s opposite field home run to right.

The Traps regained the lead with three in the top of the seventh as the first three batters up — Kevin Jacobs, Rob Kroll and Jake Ennis — all got on and scored to make it 11-9, but the Jays, as pesky as ever, fought back to force extras as both Doug Sarkis and Andy Qaqish scored their third runs of the game in the bottom half.

From there, it was all Trappers, who put up eight in the top of the eighth, then held on after the first four Jays got on basee, with three of them scoring.

Cayton Leo was the early-game hero for the Trappers, belting home runs in his first two at-bats and driving in six during the game. Leadoff man (and pitcher) Ennis also went 4-for-5 with four runs scored.