Mississippi, Louisiana reach finals in both brackets
By Justin Jarrett
LowcoSports.com
The Dixie Baseball World Series at Burton Wells Recreation Complex started with a storm that gave way to a flurry of baseball, and one of the local teams survived a frantic weekend before falling short of the championship.
Mississippi and Louisiana were the last two teams standing in both the 14-and-under Dixie Boys and 13-and-under Junior Boys brackets. Both squads from Hattiesburg (Miss.) remained undefeated going into Tuesday’s night’s championship games against teams from Jefferson Parish (La.), with the challengers from Louisiana needing to win Tuesday to force winner-take-all rematches Wednesday.
After evening thunderstorms disrupted the first round of games Friday night, Saturday and Sunday became a marathon of elimination games, and Beaufort County’s 14-and-under all-stars dropped their first two games to make an early exit with a heartbreaking 7-6 loss to Tri-County (S.C.). The Tri-County all-stars from Hampton, Bamberg, and Barnwell counties rallied from a 5-1 deficit and sealed the win with a strikeout to strand the tying run at third.
Beaufort County’s 13-and-under all-stars dropped their opener 13-2 to Livingston (Texas) on Saturday morning but bounced back a day later, as stellar pitching performances and timely hitting carried the host team to a 7-2 win over Decatur County (Tenn.) and a 6-2 triumph over Spring Hill (Fla.) to advance to Monday.
Zack Szypczak, Marion Simmons, and Russell Cooler combined to stymie Tennessee in the first elimination game, and the lineup gave them plenty of support in a four-run second inning. Simmons was 2-for-4 with an RBI, and Colt Spargur had two hits and scored twice, while Rawles Moore drove in two runs and Stephen Mader had an RBI single.
Beaufort County had to win a second time Sunday to stay alive, and Noah Sepulveda delivered a strong effort on the mound with seven strikeouts across 4⅔ innings before Moore finished it off by retiring all seven batters he faced. Szypczak and Simmons each had two hits at the top of the order.
It looked as if the local squad might be among the final four teams standing Tuesday when Simmons took a shutout into the sixth against Lumberton (N.C.), but Beaufort County couldn’t break through against Luke Lowry, and North Carolina scraped together a four-run rally in the sixth to oust the home team.
