Although Mountain Ridge dominated the 10-team, 8-10-year-old District Four All-Star Little League Tournament in Pahrump, it wasn’t a cut-and-dried win for them like everyone thought it would be.
The exciting tournament was held all last week at Ian Deutch Memorial Park.
“Summerlin South fought back and they were tough,” the P-Town Little League president Lou Banuelos said. “These guys hit a grand slam in the bottom of the third, which made the game an 8-8 tie. Then they actually took the lead, 11-8, but Mountain Ridge tied the game and made it 11-11. In the top of the sixth inning Mountain Ridge took a 15-11 lead. Summerlin South then came up short and lost 15-14.”
Mountain Ridge went undefeated in the all-star minors tournament.
P-Town Little League hosted the District Four tournament to end the season. According to Lou Banuelos, the goal for P-Town was to do better in the tournament than they have in previous years, which meant they had to go three games or more.
P-Town did that, by beating Red Rock 22-1 on Wednesday, ensuring them a third game. P-Town then played Peccole on Thursday and lost 21-9.
Peccole then went on to beat Cheyenne on Friday, 7-3, but lost to Summerlin South 4-3.
In the tournament, Summerlin South and Mountain Ridge faced off on Friday with Mountain Ridge winning 14-6. The two teams played again on Monday for the championship with Summerlin South having to beat Mountain Ridge twice to win the championship.
Banuelos said with such a successful tournament that the possibility of having another one next year is looking good.
“We got positive feedback with the tournament,” he said. “Many commented to me on what a good job we did. Caroline Thacker, the P-Town player representative, deserves a lot of the credit for coordinating this event. I would also like to thank Matt Luis for the great job he did with keeping the fields and parks looking so good. And Debbie Rager did a great job with all the concessions. Next year I would like to get the 11-year-olds or the juniors out here.”
Contact sports editor Vern Hee at vhee@pvtime.com