MountainOne Wins City Title, Sends Coach Out a Winner
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. -- It may not have been a perfect season, but it was a perfect ending for the MountainOne Little League team.
Zachary Davignon struck out four, and Hunter Sarkis drilled a home run over the fence in left-center as MountainOne defeated Morrison Berkshire, 12-2, on Friday night in Game 3 of the North Adams City Championship Series at Fallon Field.
The victory capped a year in which MountainOne went unbeaten in the regular season and capped the career of coach Chris Marsh, who had previously announced this would be his last of 12 seasons in a Little League dugout.
Marsh said that he did not have to do much to get his players to regroup after Wednesday's loss in Game 2 of the best-of-three series.
"We talked about it a little bit, but I told them to take [Thursday] off and clear their heads and just come back ready to play," Marsh said.
"We told them Wednesday night: You've got to do your playing on the field. And all the other stuff, the mental stuff, the banter back and forth, you've got to let that go. And they did that."
Focus has been a theme for MountainOne this season.
"One of the things we talked about at the beginning of the year in the gym when we first started practicing was focus, and the other thing was respect, respect for the game," Marsh said. "They had a goal in mind, and they got there.
"As far as Wednesday night goes, they said it. A couple of the 12-year-olds said, 'It's all about going back to MountainOne baseball.' "
It was Morrison Berkshire that drew first blood on Friday night.
Landen Champney led off the game with a single and moved up thanks to a Justyn Cowell walk and a wild pitch/passed ball combination to score the game's first run.
Cowell came home from second when Omar Uqdah ripped a double down the left-field line to make it 2-0.
But -- not for the last time -- MountainOne's defense came up big to get the last out. The next batter hit a fly ball to center that Jonathan Cornell fielded and quickly threw in to second to catch Uqdah trying to tag up.
Morrison Berkshire starter Nick Carpenter started strong in the bottom of the inning, getting the first two batters to ground out. But then Sarkis hit a home run to cut the deficit in half.
It was the only pitch Sarkis faced all night. His next two times up he was intentionally walked -- once with a man on second and first base open and once to lead off the fourth inning.
"I think that's been earned over the last few years," Marsh said. "He's a helluva athlete and a helluva player. I just told him, as long as he keeps respecting the game, he'll go a long, long way."
Logan Briggs followed the homer with a walk, and Jackson Owensby's infield single put two men on before Morrison's defense broke down. Two errors on the same play allowed Briggs, Owensby and the batter, Cornell, all to score to make it 4-2.
In the second, MountainOne scored six more to take a 10-2 lead. Davignon helped his cause with the inning's only hit, a two-run double to the right-center gap.
Davignon got some defensive help in the third, when Sarkis backed up and made a leaping catch on a line drive at short, and in the fourth, when second baseman Justin Chen speared a line drive and doubled off a man at second.
MountainOne went scoreless in the third but entered the fourth needing two runs to end the game by the 10-run rule.
After Sarkis drew an intentional walk to start the inning, Logan Briggs was walked.
A wild pitch sent Sarkis to third where he scored on a groundout by Owensby. Briggs scored moments later on another pitch in the dirt to provide the final margin.
An emotional Marsh talked about what went through his mind as the final inning unfolded.
"Them," he said. "We spent four years building that team. They stuck with it. It was all their hard work. And I'm glad to see it paid off."
