Back Mountain suffered an opening-round loss Wednesday in the Little League Baseball 9-11 state tournament, falling 4-0 to Hollidaysburg at the State College Little League.
Section 5 champion Back Mountain will play in an elimination game at 2 p.m. Thursday against Section 2 champion West Point at State College.
Back Mountain drew a tough opponent in the opening round. Section 4 champion Hollidaysburg won the 8-10 state championship a year ago in a tournament played at the Back Mountain Little League. It then went on to win the Eastern Regional title.
Many of those 8-10 players were on the field Wednesday for Hollidaysburg.
The game was scoreless entering the bottom of the fourth when Hollidaysburg’s Sam Mikolajczyk hit an infield single and stole second. He moved to third on a single to center by Blake Chamberlain and scored on a groundout by Trey Muth.
Back Mountain had an opportunity to tie the score in the top of the fifth. Ollie Bross opened the inning with a single to left, but a pair of flyouts and a hard lineout to third ended the threat.
Hollidaysburg tacked on three more runs in the fifth. CJ Burger had an RBI double and Zion Shubik followed with an RBI triple. Shubik scored on a sacrifice fly for the final run of the game.
