HARRISON, Maine – This is getting to be rather ho-hum.

The Newtown Babe Ruth Baseball 11-year-old All Stars made their third consecutive appearance in the New England Regional Tournament and for the second time (the first was as 9-year-olds) the locals have brought home a championship.

After slipping past Nashua, New Hampshire (5-3), and pounding Marblehead, Massachusetts (11-0), the 11s completed a sweep of their New England competition with a 12-2 win over Nashua North, New Hampshire (12-2), and – this time – a much closer win over Marblehead (3-2).

“I couldn’t be prouder of this team,” said manager Michael Lynch. “The expectations were high and it was nice to see them succeed.”

The bats had gotten untracked in the initial win over Marblehead and the bats stayed hot in Newtown’s meeting with Nashua North. The locals posted eight runs in the first inning to put the game out of reach right away.

Daniel Lynch led off the game with a double and then Mikey Tobin, Brandon Rosenberger, Sean Kennedy and RJ Roman all followed with hits. Ryan Schmidt and Brian Reed added RBI doubles while Johnny Fracker contributed a run-scoring single in the explosive inning.

From there, Bryan Czel, Rosenberger and Fracker provided the pitching support, keeping Nashua off balance at the plate and essentially off the bases, while Erik Hoffman and Kennedy continued to pace the offense in this shortened game.

Meanwhile, Newtown’s defense was strong as Rosenberger, Kennedy and Tobin turned a beautiful double play to end one Nashua rally while Steven Braun and Alex Nordstrom were solid in the outfield.

The win pitted the locals against the Loser’s Bracket champ, Marblehead, and perhaps the Massachusetts team was stung by the drubbing at the hands of Newtown earlier in the tournament because they made things a lot tougher in the championship.

“Their pitcher was throwing really hard,” said Lynch. “He was probably throwing in the low 60s, which we hadn’t seen much of in the tournament.”

And thus Newtown had to rely on its superior pitching and defense in order to prevail.

RJ Roman and Rosenberger were forced to consistently work out of tough jams on the mound, including two innings where Marblehead loaded the bases with no outs.

Both times Marblehead , though, it failed to score. Also key was the defensive play in the field, which included several diving stops of hard ground balls, a huge double play executed by Lynch and Tobin in the sixth inning, and a tremendous relay from the right field fence to home as Brian Reed fired a strike to Lynch, who then threw home to Johnny Fracker to nail a Marblehead runner trying to score.

“We escaped jam after jam after jam,” said Lynch. “But our defense has been strong all summer. And people knew we could hit the ball, but they didn’t realize we could pitch and we pitched really well.”

At the plate, Rosenberger was 2-for-3 and would have been 3-for-3 were he not robbed a third hit on a nice catch by the Marblehead fielder near the right field fence.

Newtown scored its first run when Tobin was hit by a pitch, advanced to second on a Kennedy infield hit, and scored on Roman pop fly over second that could not be cleanly handled by the Marblehead second baseman.

The locals had a chance to score again in the third inning when Lynch walked and Rosenberger hit a one-hop double over the left-center field fence. Lynch was forced to stop at third on the grounds-rule double, as Lynch later tried to score on a groundout by Kennedy and was called out on runner interference after colliding with the Marblehead catcher.

Marblehead scored a couple of runs to take the lead but Newtown, down 2-1 in the bottom of the fifth, rallied back to take the lead.

Reed was hit by a pitch and promptly stole second. Lynch then stroked a single up the middle, moving Reed to third. Lynch continued to second on the play, but the Marblehead pitcher threw wildly to second, thus allowing Reed to score and Lynch to go to third. Rosenberger then calmly smoked a single to left field, scoring Lynch with the go-ahead run.

Roman then went out in the sixth and retired the side to preserve the victory and the championship for the Newtown 11-year-olds.

So, over the course of the last three summers the locals have posted an incredible 45-9 record (an .833 winning percentage) after going 16-2 as nine-year-olds, 14-4 as 10-year-olds, and 15-3 as 11-year-olds.

Newtown missed out on a trip to the Cal Ripken World Series last year, but will certainly have its sights set on Aberdeen, Maryland in 2005.