American Legion: Harrisburg holds on to beat Herrin

At no point did Harrisburg Post 167 head coach Doug Emery feel safe with a lead against Herrin in Thursday's play of the 5th Division American Legion Tournament in West Frankfort.

One thing that Emery was confident in - his son Bryce - who tossed a three hitter and banged out four hits en route to a 7-1 win over Post 645.

"No, I was never comfortable or confident," Emery said. "Especially after what Herrin did to Highland, coming back and beating them 8-7. I never felt comfortable against this Herrin team because I know what they can do. They're capable of putting up six or seven runs on you in any inning.

"I really wasn't comfortable when it was 7-1, but I felt good about having Bryce throwing. He was throwing strikes, had good control and was commanding the game."

Emery went all nine innings and had a shutout going into the eighth inning until he allowed the lone one run for Herrin on a wild pitch. In addition to just giving up three hits, Emery struck out 11 on the day and walked three.

"What an effort by Bryce in this heat, I wasn't expecting that from any pitcher in this whole tournament," Doug Emery said. "It was a great effort on his part, but also we made the plays. We played some good defense behind him and we made the plays. I'm not even sure if we made any errors, but we got some key clutch hits when we scored our runs early in the game. Some key two-out hits and I know three or four runs where we scored with two outs. That's huge when you can score with two outs."

Harrisburg scored two runs in the third inning when with two outs, Emery singled, followed by a Noah Vallette walk. Patrick Bittle then singled to plate Emery and Britton Riden singled to score Bittle.

Post 167 added to its lead by one in the fourth inning and again with two outs, Austin Hefner ripped an RBI double to score Adam Ninness.

Harrisburg then tacked on two more runs in the sixth when Emery hit a one-out RBI double to center field to score Hefner and in the seventh, Presley Gauch and Jordan Gould scored to give Post 167 a 7-0 lead.

At the plate, Emery went 4-for-5 with an RBI, while Hefner finished 2-for-5 with an RBI. Vallette, Bittle, Riden and Gould all had one hit and an RBI for Post 167.

Michael Dann covers prep and college sports for the Harrisburg Daily Register. Follow him on Twitter: @spydieshooter.