Pahrump Valley Juniors baseball fall behind early in tournament

The Pahrump Valley Juniors baseball team struggled during their opening game of the All-Stars tournament in Las Vegas.

The Junior All-Stars team, which is comprised of players from all three of Pahrump’s Little League baseball junior division teams, dropped their opening game of the tournament against the South Summerlin juniors team on Saturday.

The Mets, Tigers and Diamondbacks all had at least four players representing their teams on the All-Star team, with the Mets and the Tigers each having five players on the team.

Benjamin Cimperman got the start on the mound for the Pahrump Juniors. He lasted just one and two-thirds innings, allowing five runs on three hits.

Cimperman was part of the league-winning Tigers team in Pahrump’s baseball league earlier this spring.

The Pahrump Junior All-Stars struggled at the plate during the game, getting just five hits from three different players.

Kayne Horibe and Samuel Mendoza, both representing the Mets, went 2-for-3 on the day. Horibe hit a double, a single and scored twice in the game, while Mendoza hit two singles and had an RBI.

Pahrump had the game close in the second inning before Summerlin South was able to get a 2-run single in the top of the inning to increase their lead to 5-0.

Pahrump cut into the lead slightly when they scored their first run in the bottom of the second inning with an RBI single by Mendoza.

Antonio Whitney, one of Cimperman’s regular season teammates and a Tigers representative, took over on the mound in the second inning and pitched the remainder of the game. He went five and one-third innings, allowing no runs on six hits.

Whitney wasn’t able to do much in the batter’s box as he went 0-for-2 with a walk and a strikeout during the game.

Outside of Horibe and Mendoza, the only other Pahrump player to get a hit on the day was Noah Amaya, a Diamondbacks representative.

Amaya finished the game going 1-for-1 with a single to start off the team’s bottom of the fourth inning.

Despite their loss in the first game of the tournament, the Pahrump Junior team wasn’t out of the tournament yet, at least not as of this writing on Monday evening.

They will get at least one more chance, which was on Tuesday night after the PVT deadline. If Pahrump won that game, which was played against Lone Mountain, they’ll move on to face Spring Valley on Wednesday night.

If the Pahrump Juniors were unable to get by Lone Mountain, their run in the tournament will have ended.

The game against Spring Valley will take place tonight at Mountain Ridge Little League field at 7 p.m.