The North Shore Nationals became the Little League District 36 champions Sunday as they defeated East Hampton’s 9-and-10-year-old boys team 6-3 in Rocky Point, thus winding up the tournament with a 6-0 record. East Hampton, which fielded a good team, finished at 4-2.
Chris Carney, East Hampton’s coach, said that thanks to his son Casey’s triple in the second inning, which scored Scott Abran, and to Ryan Balnis’s two-run base hit in the third, which plated Alex Bobek and Kix Bock, East Hampton had the lead, at 3-2. “They scored a couple after that, and while we had runners on in the last three innings, we couldn’t get them in. It was a tough game to lose, a well-played game by both sides. We just ran out of time.”
Abran and Jackson Cook, who had been the winning pitcher in an extra-inning 7-5 win over Riverhead on July 6, were the pitchers.
Little League games usually end after six innings, but the one on July 6 went into the ninth. The winning run was scored when Owen Diamond, who started East Hampton’s at-bat on second base, was driven in by Walker Bohnsack. “They loaded the bases with one out in their half, and then hit two deep shots into the outfield that we caught,” Carney said.
North Shore’s 9-10 girls defeated their East Hampton peers, coached by Jeff Tupper, 13-6 at North Shore Friday to win a District 36 girls softball title, and East Hampton’s 11-and-12-year-old boys team was to have played North Patchogue-Medford at Riverhead’s Stotzky Park Monday in a district semifinal, the winner to advance to the championship game this evening at the North Shore Little League complex.