The Ohio Wesleyan men’s soccer team landed in San Antonio on Wednesday afternoon and, on the way to the team hotel, the traveling party stopped at a Panera Bread restaurant. While they were eating chicken soup, sandwiches and bagels, two of their three vans were cased and robbed.

Welcome to the final four.

This column is about the Bishops’ coach, Jay Martin, who said it is not about him — it’s about the players. OK, let us simply acknowledge that there is a symbiosis. This fresh case of theft in the Alamo City is illustrative.

“It’s all part of the total program,” Martin said by telephone yesterday.

Getting cleaned out at a Texas bakery is all part of the total program?

“In a way, sure,” Martin said.

Eighteen players lost personal items, including notebooks, laptops and iPods. Remember, this is Division III, so these are real student-athletes — and next week brings final exams. Some of them saw a semester’s worth of research get ripped off. How are they supposed to study without their laptops (or, for that matter, their iPods)?

Phone calls were placed to the president of the university and assorted deans. Contingencies were made. At least one professor hopped a plane to San Antonio to provide on-site help with an accounting project that is coming due. Meanwhile, police reports were filed, and shin guards, socks and cleats were borrowed from Trinity College, site of the final four, and practice was had.

OWU will play Montclair (N.J.) State in a semifinal tonight. The winner moves on to Saturday’s national championship game.

Martin’s message: Stick together, remember why you are here and smile.

“We lost a lot of material stuff, but we’re down here for the experience,” he said. “The experience can’t be replaced.”

Martin, in his 35th year at OWU, has one of the finest coaching records in all of collegiate sports. His Bishops have won 22 conference championships and made 31 NCAA Tournament appearances. They have won 12 regional titles and made eight final four appearances. They have reached the championship game three times and won one national title, in 1998.

“When you consider how much parity has come into the game since I played, what is remarkable is that his winning percentage has actually increased over the decades,” said Jay Vidovich, who played at OWU 20 years ago. “That is just not being done anymore.”

Vidovich, a nationally recognized coach at Wake Forest, is among dozens of Martin’s former charges to have taken up the profession. He and scores of other alumni planned to travel to San Antonio this weekend. They do not forget their old coach or his philosophy, which, loosely put, is about challenge, engagement and fun, in equal parts.

“Jay has a holistic view of sport as a mirror for life,” Vidovich said. “Academics and being a good person matter, along with soccer. He cares. That’s why we all keep coming back, because it’s real.”

It is as real as housework. Bishops players still maintain the Ray Rike Field complex in Delaware. They clean locker rooms and bathrooms, do laundry and landscaping, their coach at their side. Martin wants them vested in their home, and protective of it. A vacuum is not just a vacuum — it is a device. Such is OWU soccer.

Martin masks heated competition with fun and games in every practice session. He has developed methods to marry the conflicting concepts of soccer — individual creativity and collective discipline — and imbue his players. He does not use drills, he presents problems, and he does it all without a trace of despotism. He is a terrific coach, but he hates being called “coach.” He’s just “Jay.”

Martin said his outlook was developed in Massachusetts, where he grew up in a family of 10 children. His father coached and was a major influence, as was one of his high school coaches, John Barker. Martin speaks of his life’s work in terms of carrying the effective and affective benevolence of his elders to another generation.

“I wanted to be like my father,” Martin said. “I wanted to be like John Barker — who, to me, was a coach. I’m not quite there yet. In my mind, I haven’t reached the level where you can characterize me as ‘coach.’ ”

Martin is 606-115-49 and, with two more victories, he will have more victories than any other men’s soccer coach in NCAA history, at any level. Put it another way: If OWU wins the title, he will set a record that might never be broken.

This makes him uncomfortable. It makes for a muddying of priorities. He returns to his message: stick together, remember why you are here and smile.

“Our goal is we always want to play on the final weekend,” Martin said. “Anything can happen after that. You can win two easy — or you can get hammered right off the bat. And besides, as I like to say, I have not scored a single goal in 35 years. It’s about the players.”

What is important to him is shared enjoyment. Go ahead and steal whatever else isn’t nailed down, it’s just a minor inconvenience. Although if a certain thief wishes to return an iMac with a certain power-point presentation that is due next week, that would be nice.

Michael Arace is a sports reporter for The Dispatch.

marace@dispatch.com