By DEVIN HASSON

As far as the McKinney Marshals were concerned, they had their opposition right where they wanted them on Friday. The Marshals knew they had to win three games in a row if they were going to lift the trophy they desired, but there was little doubt in their mind that they would.

After holding off a pesky Flower Mound Warrior team to advance to the last two teams, McKinney handed the previously-unbeaten Arkansas Seminoles their first loss with a dramatic 11-8 victory to force a final game. The finale was all Marshals, as they blew the game open early and picked up a 16-5 run-rule victory to claim the 9U national division championship on their home turf at the Super Series Central Championships at The Ballfields at Craig Ranch in McKinney.

After an explosive first inning in which the teams combined for 11 runs, it was all Marshals from there. They scored 10 unanswered runs, while relief pitcher Dylan Ditzenberger shut the door on the Seminoles for the final four innings.

It was a sweet victory for McKinney, which was on the other end of things at the event last year. “They beat us last year, so we wanted to come back this year and do what we needed to and get it done,” Marshals head coach Collins DeLoach said. Tournaments, especially those that are a week long, often come down to a war of attrition. But despite it being its third game of the day, McKinney was the crisper team.

After emerging from the first inning with a 6-5 lead, the Marshals steadily pulled away. They tacked on one run in the second and three more in the third, as Chandler Grigsby and Bo Dallas had RBIs and Micah Dallas scored on a wild pitch to make it 10-5. McKinney continued to pour it on in the top of the fourth, as Zach DeLoach tripled and scored on a base hit by Justin Marino. Reed Hoelscher and Marino scored on wild pitches and Aaron Salazar drove in a run to push the margin to 14-5.

With the help of four walks, the Marshals invoked the run rule in the fifth, with Hoelscher and Ditzenberger driving in runs. Ditzenberger did the rest on the mound, as he scattered four hits and allowed zero runs during the final four innings. “We did this back in 2006 at the USSSA tournament in Sulphur (Springs)  and we have five returning players from the same team and they knew they could do it,” DeLoach said. “It’s 105 degrees out there, its hot and we had long games, the Warriors (Flower Mound) gave us a tough game but I knew that they had it in them, they’ve had it in them all year.”

“We don’t give up, we’ve played a lot of 10-year-old ball this year, we played up, so we’ve been through this. I think we play very, very well together as a team. We didn’t do an MVP here, we didn’t do an all-tournament team because everybody contributed.”

After holding off the No. 9 seed Flower Mound Warriors, 8-6, the Marshals knew they would have to defeat the Seminoles, who had beaten them 8-5 on Thursday, twice to win the title. The first game on Friday was tight throughout, but got very interesting late. McKinney had used a two-run double by Andrew Keefer to drive in DeLoach and Cooper Chandler to take a 7-2 lead to the bottom of the fifth, but Arkansas was far from done.

The Seminoles took advantage of three errors to start the inning, as Jacob Henry and Zac Freeman came around to score. Evan Hooper had a two-run double to plate Hayden Lassiter and Hunger Milligan, Chase Freeman had a RBI double and Josh Pinter hit a sacrifice fly to give Arkansas an 8-7 lead.

Down to its final three outs, McKinney nearly had its tournament end when the Seminoles narrowly missed on a double play. With one out left, the Marshals went to work, as Salazar and Micah Davis each had run-scoring singles and another run scored on an error to take an 11-8 lead. Hoelscher, who had come on in relief, found himself in a bases-loaded jam in the bottom of the sixth but was able to get the final out and send the tournament to a deciding game.

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