LUMBERTON — Before a pitch was thrown, Monday’s majors game between Lumberton and West Robeson was already the signature game of the 2022 Dixie Youth World Series, as two local teams battled it out for neighborhood bragging rights and the chance to continue on in the tournament.

But the game that unfolded — in front of a crowd surrounding the Dr. Raymond B. Pennington Athletic Complex’s Field 1 in all directions, and several deep down each base line — was truly befitting of that distinction.

In the first tournament game in any division to reach the eighth inning, after Lumberton scored a single run in the top half of that frame, a pair of solo home runs gave West Robeson a thrilling 5-4 win.

West Robeson will play Alabama at 4:30 p.m. Tuesday. Lumberton was eliminated with Monday’s loss.

“It was a great ballgame; they’ve got a really good team also,” West Robeson coach Eric Freeman said. “There was a lot of heart out here tonight — I saw much more heart than I saw talent. That’s what sticks in my mind with this game. When you’ve got a game like this, talent’s off the table, and it was just a dogfight.”

“It seems like any time these two towns get together and play each other, it never fails, if one’s better than the other or they’re equal, they always bring a good show to the field,” Lumberton coach Jonathan Britt said.

Lumberton took its eighth-inning, 4-3 lead when Sam Smith scored on a wild pitch, but Lumberton left the bases loaded. Seth Brooks led off the bottom half with a home run to tie the score.

“I stepped in the box and I was thinking of a base hit, then he threw it right down the middle so I was thinking to go deep,” Brooks said. “I was a little scared, I’m not going to lie, but I guess I had confidence.”

Two batters later, Zayin Hunt swung, and the first-base side — and western half of Robeson County — erupted as his drive cleared the outfield fence to seal victory.

“I was a little nervous, but I knew I had my confidence. When Seth hit his out, that boosted me up,” Hunt said. “When I got up there, and it was 1-2, I got nervous. But I stayed focused and I hit it.”

“(Lumberton was) up one run; the guys come in on top of the world (after stranding the runners),” Freeman said. “We were at the top of the lineup; I couldn’t have picked a better spot to be in the lineup in that situation. The guys just executed. The guys that hit the home runs late in the game tonight are the same guys that have helped us through these tournaments.”

Lumberton scored all four of its runs in the game on wild pitches; Tristan Willoughby and Waylen Willoughby each scored in the third, for a 2-0 lead, and Stephen Stone scored in the fifth to tie the game at 3-3.

“We had a chance to go up multiple times through the whole game though,” Britt said. “We didn’t take advantage of the chances we had, and we didn’t capitalize when we should have most of the time.”

West Robeson took a 3-2 lead in the fourth inning on an Ayden Hammond no-doubter over the left-center-field wall.

“We were down by three, I knew I had to do something,” Hammond said. “He threw it right there and I just hit it.”

“Ayden had a big one that leveled the playing field for us, got us on the board,” Freeman said. “Then we kind of held steady for a while until those big ones in the last inning.”

West Robeson, who will face elimination in each successive tournament game it plays, used both Joseden Oxendine and Dakota Locklear for several innings during Monday’s game. Caiden Hall and Jace Wilson pitched the bulk of the game for Lumberton.

“We used whatever we had; we didn’t play for tomorrow,” Freeman said. “We didn’t play by pitch counts; we didn’t care about pitch counts. We looked at our pitchers and when their arm slots started dropping, we knew they were tired and we took them out. We’ll regroup in the morning and see what we’ve got left. We still have pitching, it’s just a matter of how we want to restructure our defense.”

Lumberton bows out of the tournament after a very respectable showing as the host, winning a game Sunday against Alabama’s runner-up and taking West Robeson, the North Carolina state champion, deep into the night.

“The outcome ain’t what we wanted, but overall, me and both of my assistant coaches, we’re well-satisfied with how we played,” Britt said. “We’ve got a young bunch of kids here, a couple olders that we leaned on and rode with, but for the most part we’re very satisfies.”