The Beloit Hornets American Legion Baseball team qualified for the state tournament for the 3rd straight season as they defeated Clifton-Clyde on Sunday afternoon, 13-8, in the zone 6 championship game. Clifton-Clyde ends their very successful season at 21-8, while Beloit will take a 25-7 record into the State Tournament in Marysville on Wednesday at 3 p.m.

Beloit jumped out to a 6-0 lead in the bottom of the first as Lane Koster delivered a two run triple and Colin Loomis and Kevin Street hit an RBI single and RBI double, respectively.

Clifton-Clyde scored 3 runs in the 3rd to cut the deficit in half, 6-3. Beloit would answer right back in the bottom of the 3rd with 3 runs of their own to push the lead to 9-3 as Colin Loomis led off the bottom of the 3rd with a home run to centerfield. It was Loomis’ 2nd homer in as many nights against Clifton-Clyde. Lincoln’s CJ Wilson came thru with a big two out, two run single to push the Beloit lead to 9-3.

Beloit’ s lead ballooned to 12-4 in the bottom of the 4th thanks to an RBI single by Koster and then Loomis greeted reliever Zach DeMars with a clutch two run single to give Beloit an eight run cushion. Clifton-Clyde made things interesting with a 4 run 5th to pull within 12-8, but that would be as close as they would get as Beloit added an insurance run in the bottom of the 6th and Lance Wolting closed the game on the mound. Wolting got the win in relief of Zach Brummer, to improve his record to 9-3 on the year.

Offensively, it was a big day for Lane Koster and Colin Loomis. Koster went 3-4 with 3 runs scored and 3 RBI. Loomis made his coach look like a genius for moving him to the 5th spot in the batting order as Loomis went 3-4 including a home run, drove in 4 runs and scored 2 times. Casey Smith also went 3-4 with 2 runs scored and CJ Wilson provided a spark at the top of the order, going 2-4 with 2 RBI.

Tyler Lambert led the Clifton-Clyde offense, going 3-4 with a run scored and an RBI. Kyle Brown went 2-4 with two runs and 2 RBI, Levi Cyphers was 2-4 with 2 runs scored, and Barrett Winter had two hits.

Beloit will play their 1st round state game on Wednesday at 3 p.m. in Marysville and you can hear that game on KD Country 94 or on www.kdcountry94.com pregame at approximately 2:45 p.m.