Pittsfield 12-Year-Olds Win District 1 Little League Title
DALTON, Mass. – It took a total team effort for the Pittsfield Little League 12-year-old All-Stars to claim an 11-0 win over Adams-Cheshire in Wednesday’s Don Gleason District 1 Championship Game.
And that is exactly what it got as Shaun Boehm hit a pair of triples, and Carmelo Coco went 2-for-2 with a double and a pair of RBIs to help send Pittsfield into next week’s Section 1 tournament, one step away from the state tourney.
The defending champs collected 10 hits – just two of them came from the first four hitters in its 12-player lineup.
“I let these guys know, they’re not like any other team,” Adams-Cheshire coach Steve Albareda said of Pittsfield. “One through 12 against some other teams, when you get to [hitters] six, seven, eight – you’re going to get those guys out. Pittsfield, they’re one through 12 stacked.
“And I told them, OK, you get two, three, four out, whatever it is, six, seven, eight is gonna burn you if you don’t stay the course.”
Not that one through four can’t, mind you. But if pitchers do limit the damage at the top of the order – as Adams’s Lador Lawson and Maddox Milesi did on Wednesday night – a mine field awaits.
“The kids asked me today if there were any changes to the lineup, and I was sitting there and I was pondering,” Pittsfield coach Joe Skutnik said. “And I said, ‘You know what? We’ve been hitting the ball all tournament. Why would I change anything?’
“Some parts of the order have come through in some games, and other parts haven’t. And the top guys, they’ve hit the ball hard. They just haven’t had the luck.”
Pittsfield did catch a break for what turned out to be the winning run in the top of the first.
Mason Fox hit a one-out single into the outfield, and a pair of errors allowed him to go all the way around to give his team a 1-0 lead.
In the second, Boehm led off with a triple to center field to ignite a three-run rally that saw Thomas Lacatell and Sean Rozak drop down run-scoring sacrifice bunts to help make it 4-0 going to the bottom of the frame.
Two of the first Adams-Cheshire hitters drew walks to start the inning, and, just an inning and a third into it, Pittsfield starter Hector Reyes-Colon had four walks to show for it.
Pittsfield turned to Myles Morrison-Gould, who settled things down with a fly ball to right and a swinging third strike to get out of the inning.
“[Morrison-Gould] knew he was coming in at some point, but we had to get Hector out there, and we’ve got to get him a little more comfortable,” Skutnik said. “Because I don’t think we’re going to do something at the next level if we don’t have Hector. Myles did a great job. … He’s done that all year long. He’s come in, gets ahead on the hitter and just puts them away.
“[Reyes-Colon] hasn’t gotten out there that much during the tournament. We may have went with him a little bit longer than we wanted to, but we’ve got to get him out there so he can do something at the next level.”
Lawson (three strikeouts, no walks, 4 innings pitched) kept it a 4-0 game through three innings, but Pittsfield broke through with five in the top of the fourth to take a commanding lead.
Boehm, Lacatell, Coco and Rozak each hit safely to start the inning, and Will Knauth tacked on an RBI single that pushed the lead to 9-0. Mason Kucka snared a line drive at shortstop to strand a runner and keep Pittsfield away from the 10-run threshold that could have ended the game after four.
Morrison-Gould, who struck out seven in 2 and two-third innings, struck out the side around base hits from Dan Collins and Avry Decker in the bottom of the fourth.
But Pittsfield tacked on two runs in the top of the fifth to put the run rule back on the table. Reyes-Colon drove in a run during the rally with a single to left field.
Coco took the mound to start the bottom of the fifth. After giving up a leadoff single to Bentley Martin, he struck out three straight hitters to end the game.
“This is the third time in four years we’ve played for the championship,” Albareda said of the Adams-Cheshire program. “We seem to get right there. We still have a big hill to climb. [Pittsfield is] good. We have a lot of respect for these guys. That’s where we need to be. We’re close. We’re not there yet.”
Pittsfield, meanwhile, looks to get back to the four-team state tournament for the first time since 2024, when the program went to Andover to play for a spot in the New England Regional.
“You’ve got to play better defense at the next level,” Skutnik said of the focus between Wednesday night and the Section 1 opener on July 21 at Westfield. “And we need to do that. I like our pitching. I like our hitting. The hitting’s got to get a little bit better for the next level, but, you know, we’ve improved each day that we’ve got out to practice. And I think if we keep that improvement, we’ll do OK in the sections.”
