ATHENS, Greece - Two years ago, the International Olympic Committee put softball on notice that it was in danger of being dropped from the Games. On Monday, in the golden light of a late Greek afternoon, the sport showed what a loss that would be.

With more than 4,100 fans filling the stadium, one of the most extraordinary teams to ever pull on uniforms bearing the five rings of the Olympics completed not a tournament but a mission. In the process, the 15 women of the U.S. softball team and their coaches gave a textbook lesson on everything positive that the Olympics try to represent.

“I told them last night, ‘Be prepared to have the best day of your life,’ ” said coach Mike Candrea, in an emotional press conference after his team had been crowned with olive branches and hung with gold.

As Candrea spoke, he fiddled with the wedding ring on the third finger of his left hand. He’s been doing that throughout the tournament he said, reminding himself of the person who was not here to share the trip.

Sue Candrea suffered an aneurysm and died last month during the team’s pre-Olympic tour of the United States. She had quit her job to be with the team and her husband of 28 years. She took on the role of mother to these young women, one of whom, first baseman Leah Amico, is a mother herself.

There was no question of Candrea quitting. He had taken over the team two years ago. His and the team’s sole mission from then until now has been to become the best team ever to play their sport.

It would be, Candrea told the team, “24-7, 365 days a year.” He didn’t exaggerate.

To be the best. We talk about that as a goal that we all should have. Athletes talk about it all the time. They all work for that, and the work some put in is beyond the imagination of most mortals.

But the U.S. softball team made them all look like slackers, personifying the pursuit of excellence as no team ever has. Their dedication was complete, their effort total, their refusal to fall into complacency absolute.

Even after the death of Sue Candrea, their coach told them that they shouldn’t think they had to win for him. “Do it for yourselves,” he told them.

And, added Lisa Fernandez, who pitched the final two wins and led the team at the plate, do it for the United States.

As they steamrolled through the tournament, chalking up shutout after shutout and adding to a team winning streak that reached 79 games Monday, Candrea kept saying he was waiting for them to have a perfect game. They were, in his estimation, always close, but never quite there.

This was his little motivational tool, transparent to all, yet effective. On Monday, after his team beat Australia 5-1, giving up its only run of the tournament, Candrea said, “This is probably the best team I’ve ever seen.

“I think it will go down and become a legacy people will talk about for a long time.”

FREE VIDEO Super softballers Aug 24: The U.S. women's team talks with "Today" host Matt Lauer about their third straight Olympic gold medal. Today Show Olympics

One of the people who watched this remarkable group reap the harvest of two years of uncompromising effort and a sisterhood that they will never experience again was Jacques Rogge, the president of the International Olympic Committee. It was, said Don Porter, the president of the International Softball Federation, who sat with Rogge, the first Olympic softball game the lord of the rings had ever seen.

The IOC has said that every sport in the games will be reviewed after every Olympiad. It wants sports that have strong competition, but it also wants sports that draw spectators at the venues and television audiences around the world. Preliminary rounds of the softball tournament were not heavily attended, but neither were preliminary rounds of gymnastics. At the final, the stadium was packed with an enthusiastic crowd, come to see a team play on a level that has seldom if ever been seen before and might never be seen again.

Porter said Rogge seemed impressed. The same could be said of everyone else who watched, especially when Crystl Bustos, the dominant slugger in the sport, hit a ball that traveled an estimated 100 feet beyond the 220-foot left-field fence. Even the pitcher who gave up that Ruthian blast, Tanya Harding, could only laugh at how far it traveled.

Despite the show put on by the Americans, someone asked Porter afterward whether the dominance of the U.S. team was somehow bad for the games. If tight competition is the essence of the Olympics, this didn’t have it.

“The Olympic Games are about excellence,” Candrea said. “We’re not ever going to be satisfied. The rest of the world over the last eight years has gotten better. There’s a lot of competition out there.”

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Stacey Nuveman is the catcher for the American team. She’s big and strong, and she walloped a home run – one of three the Americans hit – that gave her team its fifth and final run. She reacted passionately to the suggestion that she and her teammates were too good for their sport’s good.

The strength of the competition four years ago in Sydney, when Team USA lost three games during round-robin play before rallying to win the gold, is what drove this year’s team to work so hard for so long. They wanted to keep the gold they first won in 1996, softball’s initial year in the Games. So they dedicated themselves as no team ever has to leaving nothing to chance.

So, Nuveman said, it was hard to believe they could be criticized “for being really good at something.

“If people are saying that, shame on them.”

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