Phenix City's 12-year-olds are in Williamsport for the first time since 1999, and they just gave everyone back home a game to remember. Down 5-0, the Alabama squad clawed all the way back and walked off with a 6-5 win over a Pennsylvania team, sending their side of the bracket into full pandemonium.
Phenix City, Alabama erases a 5-0 deficit and wins a LLWS thriller!
This isn't some out-of-nowhere Cinderella run. Phenix City Little League punched its ticket to Williamsport with a 4-0 shutout over Nolensville, Tennessee, and had to survive an elimination game against a West Region team just to keep playing, winning 12-2 by mercy rule behind Cam Lee's go-ahead homer and pitcher Urijah Berklite's 6 strikeouts. That win against a West squad kept them alive long enough to run into Pennsylvania on Monday.
The name everyone's talking about is Kinley Rasmus, the lone girl on the Phenix City roster. She's not just along for the ride — she threw the shutout that got this team out of Regionals in the first place and chipped in offensively in that clincher too. Head coach Case Rasmus, her uncle, has called her the best player on any field she steps on, and the roster runs deep with Rasmus family history: Case watched his older brothers Colby and Cory help Phenix City win it all back in 1999 under their father's coaching.
ROLL TIDE !!!! RASMUS IS THE BEST GIRL TO EVER PLAY IN THE LLWS
That kind of reaction sums up why this run is resonating beyond the tri-cities. A 12-year-old girl anchoring a pitching staff at the Little League World Series, on a team with a real family legacy attached to the program, erasing a 5-run deficit in an elimination-style spot — that's the kind of story LLWS is built for every August.
For a program making its first trip back to Williamsport in over 25 years, every extra day on the bracket matters. Phenix City has now survived multiple do-or-die spots in a row, and if the comeback over Pennsylvania is any indication, nobody in the field should feel comfortable seeing them across the diamond next.