CLINTON – After committing five errors and leaving nine runners on base in Saturday’s 8-1 opening round loss to Troy, the Columbus County All-Stars bounced back on Sunday to take a 4-2 victory over Tryon National in second-round play of the North Carolina Dixie Youth AAA (ages 10-under) Baseball Tournament.

Sunday’s late afternoon and evening rains forced postponement of five of the eight second-round games. Those games will be completed today and games on today’s original schedule will be played Tuesday.

The Columbus All-Stars, coached by Bill Johnson, Mike Mobley and Shane Barnhill, will step into third-round play Tuesday at 3:30 when they are scheduled to take on the Dallas-Wayne County winner.

David Bryson was the winning pitcher for Columbus County as he struck out nine batters and yielded four hits in the complete-game performance. He gave up his first earned runs in 22 innings of All-Star play on a two-run second-inning single by Grant Anderson.

Columbus County scored all its runs in the fourth inning on a RBI double by Zack Hardin and RBI singles by Phillip Andrews, Tanner Daniels and Chad Cecil.

Hardin led Columbus County with two doubles. The Columbus squad had a total of eight hits and committed two errors. They left eight runners on base.

The loss eliminated the Tryon team from tournament play. Tryon had fallen to West Robeson by a 4-0 score in Saturday’s opening round.

In Saturday’s game, Troy’s Cody McKenzie drove in four runs with two doubles and scored three runs to pace the victory.

Columbus County avoided a shutout in the final inning when a sacrifice fly by Dwight Gore scored Austin Davis from third base.

Luke Tedder had two hits for Columbus County while David Bryson, Zack Hardin, Chad Cecil and Degner Axelberg also had hits.
The tournament held its opening ceremonies Friday night with former Clinton High and East Carolina University football great Leonard Henry serving as keynote speaker.

The 16-team, double-elimination tournament is scheduled to run through Friday or Saturday with the winner receiving a berth in the 2006 Dixie Youth AAA World Series that will begin Aug. 13 at Goodlettsville, Tenn.