LYMAN — The Biddeford 11-12 year old Little League All-Star team topped York 9-2 to win the District 4 Championship Monday afternoon in Lyman.

For the second year in a row, the Tigers powered through the gauntlet to place atop the standings and into the state tournament.

“It feels really good, we won it last year when I was an 11 year old so it’s been incredible to go back-to-back,” said Biddeford’s Will Harriman.

After dropping its second game to Alfred/Lyman in a 2-1 heartbreaker, Biddeford rebounded by winning five-straight games.

“It just added fuel to the fire for us … it made us want to work even harder for it,” said Biddeford’s Ashton Crowell. “It feels great, we’ve worked super hard for this. The whole three or four weeks, we’ve worked super hard for this.”

Biddeford coach Marcus Crowell was proud of his team’s resiliency and hard work.

“It’s really a tribute to their hard work. It’s hard not to get emotional after this win because they did everything we asked, and here we are district champs,” said Marcus Crowell.

The Tigers jumped on York early, taking a 3-0 lead in the top of the first inning. After getting a run across the plate on a passed ball, Biddeford’s Will Goodwin and Micah Ernest would hit back-to-back RBIs to take the 3-0 advantage.

Biddeford would add five more runs in the third inning. Harriman, Caleb Viger and Kaleb Janelle would each hit RBI singles in the inning, along with a two-run single from Ernest.

Goodwin would hit a big home run in the fourth to score Biddeford’s ninth run.

Kyle Dion got the start for the Tigers and impressed, pitching six innings and allowing just two runs on three hits with six strikeouts.

Biddeford fired on all cylinders Monday, and Ashton Crowell felt his team was ready heading into the final.

“We were really prepared for this game, everyone stayed positive,” said Ashton Crowell.

According to Marcus Crowell, the Tigers have seen steady improvement throughout the summer and hope they have hit their peak at the right time.

“We really felt like we were getting better every game, every game we felt like we improved just a little bit,” said Marcus Crowell. “We put kids in positions, and we’ve seen them make every play whether it was difficult or routine. Today our fielding was nice, our pitching was great, Kyle (Dion) did a great job on the mound … it was a great team win.”

Looking ahead to the state tournament, the Tigers hope to stay hungry and make some noise.

“We’re going to take it one game at a time and see how it turns out,” said Harriman.

“We want to make sure the kids aren’t satisfied with this,” said Marcus Crowell. “We’re obviously very happy to be district champs, our goal at the beginning of the year was to be district champs. Now that we’ve done that our goal is to be state champs and we are going to take the same approach into that tournament.”

— Sports Staff Writer Alex Sponseller can be reached at [email protected] or at 282-1535 ext. 323.