Gallery • 5 Photos

John Henson

Halanah Shepherd delivered a pitch for the Tri-City All-Stars in District 4 championship game action.

LONDON — One round short of a trip to the state tournament, the Tri-City All-Stars fell 10-3 to Hazard/Perry County on Tuesday in the District 4 Tournament (ages 11-12) finals at the South London Little League Complex.
Hazard grabbed an early lead with four runs in the first inning with the help of four walks and remained in control as Peyton Fields pitched a two-hitter with 13 strikeouts. Fields walked two and hit three batters.
Makayla Shepherd gave Hazard the early lead as she cleared the bases with a shot into the right-fielder corner that turned into an inside-the-park grand slam.
“We knew going into the game we couldn’t make any defensive mistakes against a team like Hazard,” Tri-City coach Scott Sherman said. “A couple of misplays gave them six runs in the first two innings. After we got that out of our system we played a pretty good game.”
Heidi Jones tripled home two runs in the second inning to push the lead to 6-0. Hazard added three more runs in the third inning with the help of a hit by Maggie Combs and an error and an RBI ground out by Fields.
Tri-City got on the board in the second inning as Halanah Shepherd was hit by a pitch and scored when D’Anna Cook was safe on an error.
Aly Sherman walked to lead off the third inning and scored on Braylen Gilley’s RBI double.
Shepherd walked to open the sixth inning and scored on Lexi Adams’ ground out. Daelyn Garland singled later in the inning before Fields ended the game by getting Akira Lee to ground out.
Shepherd gave up nine runs on five hits in three innings on the mound, with three strikeouts and five walks. Sherman allowed one unearned run in three hitless innings, with three strikeouts and no walks.
Sherman was proud of the Tri-City team’s showing in the tournament, one of the deepest runs in tournament play in league history.
“I’m beyond proud of this team. We had a roster of 10 players from the two teams in our league. We have the smallest league in the district and we finished second in the tournament. These girls are dedicated to the sport and the majority of them played on our travel team last year when our Little League season was canceled due to COVID,” he said. “We told them to hold their heads high, their hard work is paying off. I’m excited to see what this group does on down the road.”
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Hazard/Perry 423 010 — 10 5. 1
Tri-City 011 001 — 3 2 5
Fields and Eddington; Shepherd, Sherman (4) and Gilley. WP — Fields. LP — Shepherd.