BANGOR, Maine — There isn’t much margin for error when you’re playing for a world championship.
So when the all-stars from Holmes County, Ohio, committed three errors in the third inning of Saturday afternoon’s Senior League World Series finale, their fate was sealed.
West University Place, Texas, capitalized on the miscues, scoring seven runs in the pivotal inning on the way to an 8-1 victory in the championship game at Mansfield Stadium.
It was the second straight world championship for manager Clint Sauls’ Texas ballclub, the U.S. Southwest Regional titlists. The program also won in 2009.
“It’s awesome, it’s a great feeling,” said West University shortstop Jimmy Winston, who snapped a 3-for-19 tournament slump by posting three singles among his team’s 10 hits.
“We’ll be able to remember that we won two World Series back to back, we were young and got to be on ESPN2, which is a cool deal. I think we’ll all cherish that for a long time,” added Winston, who was among 11 returnees from the 2014 team.
Joe Gobillot and Turner Gauntt each stroked two singles with an RBI and Mitchell Black laced a two-run triple for Texas, which racked up 65 hits in the SLWS.
Jacob Millender claimed he pitching win with 4⅓ innings of one-hit shutout relief after spelling starter Gobillot, who experienced some control issues.
“It’s unreal. It’s been a lot of hard work,” Sauls said.
“I’ve known this group of boys since they were 12 and I can have a tendency to get pretty hard on them,” he added. “They’ve responded pretty well and I could not be more proud of this group.”
The U.S. Central champs mustered only singles by Tyson Gingerich, Braden Mast and Noah Sommers to support pitcher Bryan Yoder. They left eight runners on base.
The game was tied 1-1 when some miscues helped open the door for Texas’ game-changing rally in the third.
William James ignited the uprising with a hard single to right and stole second, then Winston singled to left. John Doxakis followed with a hot shot to third base that was not handled and deflected over to the shortstop.
An ill-advised throw to second sailed wide and into foul ground down the right-field line, allowing two runs to score. Millender then reached when his grounder toward the middle got under the shortstop, plating another run.
“That inning was just a mess,” said Holmes County manager Mike Yoder. “It started with the ground ball off our third baseman’s arm and it just kind of snowballed after that.”
Gobillot pulled a single through the right side and Gauntt beat out an infield hit, loading the bases. The next run scored on a wild pitch, before Black hammered a two-run triple over the head of the center fielder.
Yoder was lifted in favor of Derek Miller, who uncorked a wild pitch that brought in the seventh run of the inning and made it 8-1.
“We’d have had to play a perfect game and we didn’t play a perfect game,” Mike Yoder said.
Gobillot, the winning pitcher in last year’s final, allowed only two hits but walked five and hit two batters. He was lifted after 3⅔ innings in favor of Millender, who gave up only one hit and struck out three to close it out.
“I tried to stay focused until the last pitch but I was really excited,” Millender said. “My curveball wasn’t working today, but I had a great defense behind me and that helped out a lot.”
Ohio jumped out to a 1-0 lead in the first inning. Tyson Gingerich beat out an infield single, then Chris Kline and Mitch Massaro worked back-to-back walks to load the bases.
Yoder brought in the run when he grounded into a 4-6-3 double play, then Gobillot got Derek Miller on a called third strike for the final out.
“We load the bases, nobody out, (and) we get one run which was good,” Mike Yoder said. “But I thought we probably should have come away with two or three that inning.”
Texas responded with a two-out rally in the bottom of the inning. Winston singled sharply through the left side and Doxakis hit a hard single to left-center.
Millender was hit by a pitch, paving the way for Gobillot’s line-drive single to center. Winston scored easily, but Derek Miller gunned out Doxakis at the plate for the third out.
“Getting that first run back for us, I think that helped Joe a lot on the mound and I think it helped us, too,” Winston said.