By Lonnie Turner

The Dillon Kiwanis Dixie Major League All Stars used a 6-run third inning to build a 7-1 lead and held on to beat the Jefferson All Stars 7-5 in State Tournament action at Freedom Florence on Saturday morning.

John Rourke, on the mound for the first time since June 12 when he started against the Giants in the first of a best-of-three series for the regular season championship at Kiwanis/ Mike Lecholop Park, got the nod from the Kiwanis coaching staff to start against the District 5 Champions. The hard throwing right-hander struck out 12 batters through five innings and allowed only four hits, but left the mound after the first two Jefferson batters reached base on hits in the top of the sixth. Jared Darmon relieved him and gave up three runs, two of which came on a towering home run by Jamie Parks, but Darmon got Trent Newberth to fly-out deep to right to end the game to earn the save for Rourke.

Dillon scored first when Cooper Lane hit one of his two doubles in the game to drive home Darmon, who had hit safely with two outs in the second inning, but Jefferson came back in the third, taking advantage of one of only two walks given up by Rourke, when Lucas Deese, the eleventh batter in the line-up, singled up the middle to send Landon Hick across the plate with the tying run.

In the big third inning, the Kiwanis All Stars jumped on starter Buddy Faile with singles by Collin Hamilton, Amari Huggins-Bruce, Tristian Brigman, and Jared Ivey, and, aided by two costly errors, they tallied six runs to force Jefferson to remove him from the mound in favor of Gavin Blackwell, who Rourke greeted with a single to send Ivey to third with only one out. Nick Evans sent Ivey home with a ground out to short to end the scoring.

In the top of the fifth, Rourke gave up three consecutive hits, but on Rod Benjamin’s single, Will Atkinson, who led off the inning, scored. Benjamin was thrown out at second trying to stretch his hit to a double. Rourke settled down on the mound and struck out two of the next three batters to end the inning and send the game into the sixth.

“We kept John in there hoping he would finish strong and get a complete game, but after the first two got on base, we went with Jared (Darmon),” explained head coach Brad Sawyer.

Leading the Kiwanis nine-hit attack was Cooper Lane with a pair of two-base hits and one run batted in. Noah Carter led off the game with a double.

Sunday, July 20

The Dillon Kiwanis All Stars advanced in the Dixie Youth Major League State Tournament being played in Florence by swamping Green Sea Floyds 12-0 late Sunday night, in a game that was postponed from 7:30 PM until 9 0’clock because of rain earlier in the day. To add to the delay, the mercury-vapor lights on three of the four fields at the Freedom Florence Complex lost power and were down for a half hour.

Every player on the 12-man squad got on base at least two times in the one-sided victory and ten had at least one hit off of five Green Sea pitchers. Noah Carter led the team with three hits in four at-bats, including a three-run homer in the second inning that gave Dillon a 7-0 lead. It was his third round-tripper in post season play through the District 10 Tourney and two games into the state tourney. His ground-rule double in the first inning stuck in the right field fence just short of a homer and he picked up his fourth RBI with a single in the top of the sixth when his team scored four more runs to put the game away.

Jared Ivey had two hits, including an RBI single that scored Carter in a four-run first inning and Amari Bruce-Huggins joined Bo-Bo McKinnon with two hits each. Dillon left the bases loaded in the fourth and fifth innings and finished the game with 12 runners left on base.

In the meantime, Tristian Brigman and Carter combined their pitching effort to allow only one hit each and each hurler struck out four in three innings each. Brigman started the game and allowed a double by JaQuan Dixon with two out in the first, but threw him out going to third two pitches later in an attempted stolen base. The hard-throwing left handed pitcher was right on target throwing only 31 pitches in his three innings on the mound and only two runners were able to make it to second base. Catcher Barnes Causey, for a second time, threw back to Brigman in the third inning, who got Anwan Graham trying to steal third base like Dixon.

Green Sea’s leadoff hitter Keith Elliott singled with two out in Carter’s first inning in relief after Ethan Damron reached first on a throwing error, but he recorded the third out with his second strikeout of the inning, leaving Damron stranded at third. He was the only player to reach third base for Green Sea in the game.

Dillon was scheduled to play Lake Marion, come from behind winners over McLeod Park Sunday night, at 7:30 p.m. on Monday evening.