SACO — There is Deering, and then there is everybody else.

And it will stay that way until some SMAA foe can prove otherwise.

Thornton Academy had a shot at upending the two-time defending Maine Class A champs, Tuesday.

The upshot?

An 11-0 thrashing played in a driving cross-wind that was accomplished in just five innings.

There wasn’t much mercy shown by Deering in the mercy-rule shortened affair.

The Rams (2-0) exploited almost every Thornton misdeed — four hit batters, for starters — which behind the three hit shutout performance of lefty hurler Regan Flaherty, made the Golden Trojans (0-2) task 11 times tougher.

“When you’ve got a young team,” said Thornton coach Greg Paradis, “you can’t give a team extra outs each inning. I think we did that.”

Thornton’s troubles surfaced from the outset.

Trojans’ starter Keegan Sullivan allowed Deering’s first three hitters of the game to reach base, walking one, hitting another, and allowing a scratch single.

Two runners eventually scored.

Thornton mounted a response in the bottom of the first, when one out singles by Alex Jacques and Steve Trask put runners on the corners.

However, the opportunity went uncashed when Flaherty fanned Sam Canales, then got Derek Cameron to ground out to second.

“My change up was running,” said Flaherty, who will head to Division I Vanderbilt University in the fall. “I felt like I was keeping them off balance, for the most part.”

The failure to get to Flaherty early cost Thornton dearly.

“One of the areas we’ve excelled in,” said Paradis, “is our situational hitting. We just didn’t get enough guys on base to do the sort of things we wanted to do.”

Flaherty allowed just one more hit the rest of the way, that being an infield single by Cameron.

By that time, Deering had bulked the score to 9-0, using two runs in the second, and five more in the fourth.

All of those runs came off Sullivan.

“He’s one of the better young pitchers in our league,” said Paradis. “He’s thrown a ton of strikes. He didn’t want to admit it, but he said he just didn’t have it. That’s the way it goes. I’m a little surprised, but it was an off day for Keegan.”

The Trojans will host Massabesic on Thursday.

— Contact Dan Hickling at 282-1535 ext. 318 or dhickling@gwi.net.