Newton Citizen

Covington — It was a long weekend with not much baseball being played, but the Newton Dixie Youth baseball team was quickly bumped to the loser’s bracket and had to play for its season Monday afternoon. After two days of rain outs, the 14-year old team, which is hosting the 2012 World Series at City Pond Park in Covington, fell 4-1 to Livingston (Texas) Sunday in the tournament’s opening round.

Newton played Laurel-Jones County (Mississippi) in an elimination game Monday at 4:00 p.m.

In Sunday’s loss, Newton grabbed a 1-0 lead in the fourth inning. Nick Womack and Greg Ritchie started the frame with walks and Blake Shoap followed with single that chased home Womack for the first run of the game. Unfortunately for the hosts, that was all the scoring they’d do.

Livingston took the lead for good in a four-run fifth inning against Shoap, who relieved starter Ritchie (2 IP, 5 K). Shoap still struck out seven in three innings of work, and the Newton staff compiled 15 strike outs in seven innings.

“Our pitching was good we just didn’t hit the ball,” said Newton coach Denny Hewell. “I think we had official…three hits, so we’ve just got to do a better job of putting the ball in play, put some pressure on the other guy. The pitching is there, we had a couple errors in the field that proved costly, (but) that’s baseball. We are facing elimination, we know what we got to work on.”

Other first-round scores:

Sumter (South Carolina) 23, Hope Mills (North Carolina) 13

Monroe (Louisiana) 14, Southwest (Arkansas) 5

West Georgia 15, Halifax County (Virginia) 3

FBA-Lake Wales (Florida) 12, Hardin County (Tennessee) 3

Opelika (Alabama) 8, Laurel-Jones County (Mississippi) 2