BERNIE -- Riley Peters and the Campbell baseball team helped break a 17-year-old record but couldn't keep pace with the Bulldogs on Wednesday.
Second-seeded South Pemiscot rallied from eight runs down, got a momentum-swinging three-run home run from Riley Cain in the fifth inning and shut down the fourth-seeded Camels late to claim the MSHSAA Class 2 District 1 championship with a 19-15 victory.
Aided by strong gusts of wind blowing out towards the 270-foot left-field wall, South Pemiscot and Campbell hit a combined 12 home runs -- six each -- to set the record for most homers in a MSHSAA-sanctioned game. Mansfield and Ava set a record with 11 on May 8, 2000 while Lawson and Lathrop matched it on May 10, 2014.
Campbell (10-6) jumped out to a sizable lead, belted its half of homers in four innings but only had one hit the rest of the way as South Pemiscot (14-7) surged ahead.
"With the wind blowing straight out to left it was really easy to loft the ball in the air and let it take care of itself," Campbell coach Kyle Matthews said. "I don't know if there's a good explanation for it, but at some point we just quit hitting it in the air and ran out of gas."
Peters and Cain each blasted three home runs, good for fifth all-time in a game in MSHSAA history, but it was Cain who had the biggest impact with his final dinger.
Trailing 15-11 in the bottom of the fifth, Kevin Burton led off with a solo shot. Jacob Davis and Noah Willingham followed with consecutive singles before Cain lifted the first pitch he saw over the left-field fence for a 16-15 lead -- South Pemiscot's first advantage.
"He's been tearing the ball off the cover all through districts, it wasn't just today," South Pemiscot coach Jason House said of Cain, who was 4 for 4 with two walks and six runs scored. "Everybody had the same wind and field conditions, and Riley kept using them to his advantage late."
Campbell, meanwhile, did not. After scoring 15 runs -- 13 earned -- off of South Pemiscot starter Ryan Russell in four innings, the Camels success against the right-hander fell flat.
Russell set down Campbell in order in the top of the fifth with the first 1-2-3 half-inning of the game to line himself up for the win.
The Bulldogs add three insurance runs in the sixth then turned to closer Colton McCulloch, who got the final six outs.
"Their pitcher just did a better job of keeping the ball down in the zone and keeping us in the park," Matthews said. "We just ran out of gas."
A loss seemed improbable for Matthews and the Camels about two hours earlier when Will Biggs jumped at the first pitch of the game and took Russell deep to left for a solo home run. Tommy Steward added his own solo shot two batters later and Jake Hankins hit an RBI double before Peters roped a three-run homer to left-center. Two pitchers later, Nick Littrell capped the seven-run inning with another solo home run.
"It was nice but I was feeling like we needed to score about 20 more runs," Matthews said. "I knew all they had to do was the same thing we did and they were going to score runs."
South Pemiscot didn't need the long ball right away as Littrell struggled to find the strike zone. He walked two of the first three he faced, hit a batter and walked in a run before he was pulled for Ben Barnett. Another run scored on a fielder's choice and Barnett hit two more batters to bring in one more as the Bulldogs cut it to 7-3.
"My first two pitchers have only thrown a few times really in the last week out of necessity, so this was not an ideal situation and we were stretched thin," Matthews said.
Campbell got a run back on Hankins' RBI single in the second, but their advantage quickly dwindled as South Pemiscot started figuring out the wind patterns.
Cain hit his first homer to lead off the Bulldogs' second before an error scored a run and trimmed the deficit to 8-5.
Campbell scored five more runs on Peters' second home run, Chris Steward's three-run double and Hankins' second RBI single to push it to 13-5 -- the largest lead of the game -- but South Pemiscot didn't go away.
Cain hit another leadoff home run to start the third, McCulloch belted one two batters later and Chandler Goff notched a two-run homer to pull the Bulldogs within 13-9.
Peters hit his third and final home run to begin the fourth and Campbell scored its final run on an error before the bats went cold.
The loss marks the end of the line for seven Campbell seniors who helped the Camels reach the district final in both baseball and basketball in the same year for the first time in school history. Matthews is also moving on after four years with the program.
"This may be the end but I'm proud of those guys, I love them and I'm going to miss them," Matthews said. "Their effort this week was just outstanding and they played their hearts out."