The East Newton Rockets, in the loser’s bracket of the American Legion District 15 tournament, had an easy game plan.

Get a win or the season is over.

After three innings of play, it looked as though the season would come to an abrupt halt, as Monett Post 91 stormed its way to an 8-3 lead.

Over the next few innings, the Rockets fought as hard as they could and made it close, but, in the end fell, 10-7 Sunday afternoon at McDonald County High School.

The loss ends the season for the Rockets, calumniating what was a summer of growing pains and valuable lessons.

“This is the first game, I felt as a team, we played with emotion and passion all game,” said East Newton coach Seth Johnson. “We made mistakes and we made errors, but we gave ourselves a chance to win it in at the end. We had two runners on and the tying run at the plate.”

East Newton went down 3-0 in the first inning against Monett (11-20) on errors, mainly, as two errors led to a pair of runs and set up an RBI single by Todd Forgey.

Post 91 went up 5-0 on a 2-run single by Preston Thompson in the second inning.

East Newton had its best single inning, offensively, in the top of the third inning by scoring three runs off Monett starter Kirk Moore.

Jake Simpson started the inning off with a single and slid in safely at second base when Taylor Hunt reached on an infield single to third base. Brodie Blackburn responded with a sacrifice bunt as the next batters, moving both over in scoring position.

Catcher Clayton Miller hit a double down the left field line to drive in both runners, making it 3-2, the closest East Newton could get to the lead.

After falling behind by five runs in the bottom of the third inning, East Newton slowly chipped away. Blake Hill reached on an error and moved around to third base on a passed ball and a groundout. Tyler Spencer added another ground out, pushing Hill across, making it 8-4 in the top of the fourth inning.

Monett’s last push came in the bottom of the fourth inning, scoring a pair of runs that provided an important cushion late in the game.

Ryan Vieth, a Purdy product, and Forgery, a Pierce City product, were walked and hit by a pitch, respectively, to open the inning. After a strikeout, a ground ball back to the pitcher appeared to be an easy out, but an overthrow at first base was the eighth error by East Newton and allowed both runners to score.

From that point, however, the momentum would be in East Newton’s hand the rest of the game. In the sixth inning, the Rockets scored a pair of runs to make it 10-6. Cody Bunch singled and was joined on the bases by Blake Dilbeck (walk) and Mason Whitman (single) with one out.

Simpson delivered an RBI single to left field, scoring Bunch. Hunt followed by grounding out, but that pushed Dilbeck across for a run.

Blackburn walked and scored on a throwing error at third base in the seventh inning, to make it 10-7.

In the top of the ninth inning, the Rockets received a one-out double from Hunt, followed by a walk to Blackburn. With the tying run up the plate, Monett reliever Josh Wiseman got a strikeout and a groundout to secure the win.

Hunt had three hits to pace East Newton’s offense.

“It would’ve been a completely different game, but we have to be able to not give up so many runs early on and get in a hole,” said Johnson. “We have been doing that all year and we have been fighting all year to get back in the games and give ourselves a chance. We are getting better, but we still got a long way to go.

“This year, it wasn’t what everybody was hoping for, but we played good competition and in the long run it will payoff. It will pay off greatly come spring time. We didn’t get as many wins as we would like, but there is some tough competition in American Legion baseball. I think it helped us take a step forward.”