Georgetown, Surfside minors open District tournament with wins

Ninety-six young sluggers from Horry and Georgetown County continued their quest to make Dixie Youth Baseball's state tournament on Monday night.

Both the minors and majors district tournaments began in Conway, with eight teams fighting for two spots in the statewide event.

The double-elimination tournaments will conclude on either Thursday or Friday night based on the week's action, and the winners will represent District 11 in the state tournament during the last week in July.

Here's a recap of Monday night's Minors games.

Georgetown 7, North Myrtle Beach 5 | Georgetown won the opening contest of the tournament. The loss was North Myrtle's first of the postseason, as they went undefeated in lopsided wins in their sub-district sweep in Green Sea Floyds.

North Myrtle Beach coach Ron Hansis said the team's poor defensive play cost them the game.

``We normally play pretty well in the field, but we had an uncharacteristic amount of errors tonight,'' Hansis said. ``We didn't hit the long ball well either. I hope we respond tomorrow night.''

While Georgetown advanced to the winner's bracket, one player said he thought the team could do better.

``It was a very ugly win,'' Carter Thompson, 10, said. ``But we still won.''

Coach Mark Nash agreed with Carter.

``You have to win the first one to win the second one,'' Nash said. We'' just don't ever give up.''

Surfside Beach 13, Conway 4 | Surfside Beach opened the nightcap with five runs in the first inning and never looked back in beating Conway.

Conway coach Heyward Gulledge said his team's performance was as strong as he'd seen all year.

``We've worked most of our kinks out during the sub-district and we really played top shelf [tonight],'' Gulledge said. ``Everyone hit the ball really well.''

Conway broke its scoring drought in the fifth inning by finally putting four runs on the board to cut the lead to 6-4, but Surfside responded with seven runs over the fifth and sixth innings to put the game away.

Defense and pitching plagued Conway, as it gave up eight walks and six errors.