After three weeks of practice, the Selma 11 and 12-year-old All-Stars finally played a game.

In the first night of the Dixie Youth District 4 tournament at the Selma SportsPlex, the Selma boys took down Chiltauga 2-1.

“They needed that game,” Selma manager C. Dwight Woods said. “We haven’t played in three weeks. They showed a lot of heart in this game and that’s what we needed.”

“We had done all we could with them at that point,” coach Mike Stokes said. “They took what we taught them over the past three weeks and used it well tonight.”

The Selma boys, playing as the visitors on day one of the tournament, started well when Fred Richardson hit a double to left field before advancing to third and scoring on a balk to give the boys a 1-0 lead.

The game would stay that way until the bottom of the fourth inning, when Selma changed from starter Damien Murry to LaDarrius Woods.

“Our starter (Murry) was ill,” Stokes said. “He just came back to practice yesterday, but we wanted to let him have a chance to come out and throw, but knew we didn’t want to make him go too long. Another thing is, Dixie Youth has a rule that if you pitch just one pitch into the fourth inning, you can’t throw for another 36 hours. We will need him down the road as he gets better.”

After Woods came in, Chiltauga was able to pull even in the fourth inning, but it was the most runs that would cross the plate for them.

The scored stayed deadlocked until the sixth and final inning when leadoff batter Bryan Crum drew a walk.

He immediately stole second base and came all the way home when a ball played to the shortstop for Chiltauga was overthrown the very next batter.

“This sets the tone for the rest of the tournament,” Woods said. “We played tough and that will help us the rest of the way.”