Lumberton Dixie Boys Baseball team wins state, advances to World Series

WINNABOW — There’s not too many baseball players with more big-game experience than a bunch of 13- and 14-year-olds from Lumberton.

Lumberton’s Dixie Boys Baseball team (14-and-under) won the state tournament on Thursday, reaching the Dixie Boys Baseball World Series — the fifth straight World Series event that the core of this team has reached as they’ve come up through different age divisions of Dixie Youth and Dixie Boys Baseball. The World Series will be played July 27-30 in Beaufort, South Carolina.

“We pretty much took the same team down there with us that was the state defending champions with us last year,” Coach Steve Stone said. “We’ve got about three quarters of our squad has four World Series under their belt.”

Lumberton was 5-0 in the tournament, played in Winnabow. It began with a 7-2 win Sunday over Duplin County, followed by an 8-1 win over Bladen County on Monday. The team got the first of two wins against Columbus County with a 10-0 decision on Tuesday, then beat Brunswick County 9-4 on Wednesday and defeated Columbus County a second time with a 9-3 triumph to claim the title.

“The five teams we played, they were all actually really good teams,” Stone said. “It was hot, it was 100 degrees some days down there, but I never once heard any complaints. We’re that Lumberton team that we’re doing it every year. We’re putting the work in for 12 months out of the year, and it shows when the time comes.”

While the team scored 43 runs in five tournament games, Stone credited its pitching and defense as a key factor in their tournament success.

“We had a lot of success on the mound. Luke Lowry, he pitched the best games of his life, and helped us get where we’re at. Our first baseman Landon (Ransom), he had crazy good defense, good game control and an awesome tournament. Our catcher (Josiah Britt), we got a lot out of him, really resilient. High-quality defense from our middle infield, Steven Stone and Sam Smith, as always. I think we might’ve only had two errors in five games, and they didn’t really affect the outcome.”

Team members include Britt, Julius Goolsby, Mason Jones, Preston Locklear, Lowry, Ransom, Matthew Shackelford, Smith, Steven Stone, Dalton Tyner and Waylon Willoughby. Steve Stone, Jeremy Britt and Jonathan Britt have coached this core throughout its multi-World-Series run over the last five years.

An opening ceremony kicks off the Dixie Boys Baseball World Series Friday in Beaufort before Lumberton begins tournament play Saturday. There are 12 teams participating in the tournament.

“We’re going to hit the field Monday, try to get three hard days of practice,” Stone said. “And then we’re going to give them about two days off, and more than that give the parents some time off because they’ve done a lot of driving back and forth.”