BIDDEFORD — The Saco 11-12 year old Little League All-Star team cruised to a 15-4 win over York to claim the District 4 title on Tuesday afternoon.

The Trojans pieced together their best performance of the summer, producing at the plate early and often while also getting a dazzling performance from pitcher Josh Kopetski on the mound.

“It’s great — we’ve had some games in the tournament where we’ve scored a lot of runs but against competition like York, it feels good and it gets them going,” said Saco coach Dave Page. “We have some time to rest before states but we’ll be practicing, we got our pitching going and our hitting going so we’re feeling pretty good about ourselves.”

Owen Critchley would get things started for Saco, scoring an RBI single in the second to give the Trojans the 1-0 lead. The bats would take off in the third however, beginning with a leadoff homerun by Will Palmer to double the lead to 2-0.

Saco would later get back-to-back RBI singles from Brady Graffam and Mason Collins, followed by a two-run shot from Pavel Tarpy to extend the lad to 6-0 after three.

York would get on the board in the bottom half of the third with a solo homerun from Danny Cammarota, but Saco responded in the top of the fourth with back-to-back homeruns by Graffam and Collins to take the 8-1 advantage.

The Trojans would tack on six more runs in the sixth inning. After scoring a run on an error, Saco would get an RBI double from Kopetski, and another run on a passed ball to make the score 11-1. A.J. Thibodeau would knock another run in, and Graffam would put the exclamation point on the win with a three-run shot to give Saco the 15-1 lead heading into the bottom half of the inning.

Despite York getting a three-run homerun from Noah Gennaro, Saco would close out the inning and secure the win.

Kopetski finished the day with 12 strikeouts on the mound, while allowing just one run on just five hits in five innings pitched.

“Josh is a phenomenal pitcher. He’s a great pitcher, he knows how to hit his spots,” said Page. “Mason was behind the plate catching for him and they’re a good team and they work well together. He makes everyone’s job when he’s pitching like that easier, whether it be with strikeouts, groundballs, he’s a great addition to our team this year.”

The Trojans move on to the state tournament in two weeks, and Page is happy with where the Trojans stand heading on to the next level.

“It’s momentum for us — we were not expecting to have that many runs scored on them but we’re happy to get the bats going,” said Page. “It’s good to have that momentum but we need to be careful about getting overconfident. There’s some good teams at states, we know the challenge ahead of us and we’re looking forward to it.”

— Associate Sports Editor Alex Sponseller can be reached at asponseller@journaltribune.com or at 282-1535 ext. 323. Follow the Journal Tribune Sports Department on Twitter @JournalTsports.