West Chester's East Side Little League saw its historic summer end one inning short of survival, falling 6-5 in extra innings to Phenix City, Alabama, on Tuesday night at Lamade Stadium in Williamsport.
The 12U squad built a 5-0 lead through three innings before Phenix City stormed back with five runs in the bottom of the third to knot the game. After regulation ended tied, a ghost runner was placed at second base for the seventh inning. East Side couldn't push its runner home, and Alabama's Brooks Cameron singled up the middle to end it.
The loss eliminated East Side from the 2026 Little League World Series after an 0-2 tournament showing that included a 3-1 opening-round defeat to Bayonne, New Jersey, on Saturday, Aug. 22.
'Win every inning'
Manager Bob Hennessey's squad boarded a bus the morning after winning the Mid-Atlantic Regional championship in Bristol, Connecticut, and rode to Williamsport without returning home. The team had been away nearly two weeks by the time it played its first World Series game.
"Win every inning, that's been our motto ever since we started playing together," Hennessey told VISTA.Today on Aug. 21, the day before the tournament opened. "We don't want to look ahead too far. We want to take it one game at a time."
That motto carried East Side through the Pennsylvania 12U state championship and a regional title win over Naamans Little League of Wilmington, Delaware, where pitcher Cole Warner threw five innings and allowed one run in a 3-1 victory. It was the first time in more than 70 years that a West Chester team won the Mid-Atlantic Regional, according to CBS News Philadelphia.
Several players on the roster were also members of East Side's 2025 11U state championship team.
Tuesday's dramatic finish
Warner gave East Side everything he had in the elimination game. He launched a two-run homer to help build the early cushion, then escaped a bases-loaded, no-out jam in the bottom of the fifth by striking out the side. West Chester Patch called the contest a "cinematic duel" played in a fine mist at Lamade Stadium.
Phenix City reliever Kinley Rasmus, one of two girls rostered in this year's World Series, shut East Side down over the final 4.2 innings, striking out six to keep Alabama alive long enough for Cameron's walk-off hit.
Between the lines
Ryan Hennessey, the manager's son and East Side's center fielder, told CBS News Philadelphia on Aug. 18 that the Williamsport experience went beyond baseball: "It's pretty cool to hang out with other teams and speak to teams not from your country."
Between games, the players traded pins, swapped gear and met kids from around the world, continuing a tradition that has defined the Little League World Series for generations.
The last Pennsylvania team to win the LLWS was Levittown in 1960, 66 years ago. East Side didn't get there, but it gave West Chester its closest brush with a title in decades.
No homecoming celebration has been announced. The LLWS championship game is scheduled for Sunday, Aug. 30, in Williamsport.
