COOPERSTOWN – Sherburne slipped into the Otsenango Pony League playoffs by virtue of a tiebreaker. Three victories later – two over division champions – Sherburne is now the league champion.

Using a stirring seventh-inning rally, Sherburne scored four runs in the bottom of the seventh to defeat previously-unbeaten Oneonta U-14, 7-6 at Doubleday Field in Cooperstown Tuesday night.

The league championship for Sherburne marks the 10-year anniversary of the team’s last Otsenango Pony League title. “No, we don’t want to wait that long again,” said Sherburne coach Craig Cole, who returns most of his team next year. “Everybody plays and everybody contributes on this team. We knew we had a chance to win this game from the get-go.”

Oneonta (10-1) jumped out to a 5-0 lead in the first inning, and clung to a three-run lead over Sherburne, who nibbled away at the deficit with single runs in the third, fifth, and sixth innings. Oneonta hurler, Mike Calkin, picked off two baserunners to limit the damage in the third, and a controversial throw-and-tag-out of Austin Jasper at the plate cut Sherburne’s fifth-inning uprising short.

Calkin, who was overpowering at times through the first four innings, began to tire and lose his control, and was lifted after six frames.

Sherburne (10-3) did little wrong in its final at-bat with the only slip-up a fielder’s choice putout at third base. Clean-up hitter Mike Wilson walked to load the bases with Carter Cole at third after an infield single, and Jesse Yerton at second. Mick Khoury launched a two-run double to the left-center field wall that scored two runs to trim Oneonta’s lead to one. J.P. Osborne walked to load the bases again sending Matt Smith the plate.

Smith didn’t look at many pitches lofting a soft single to right field that scored the tying and winning runs – his first and only hit of the game.

“Of the 12 guys we had, no one was a deficit to us anywhere on the field,” Cole said. “The hitting was pretty consistent from top to bottom, and everyone contributed.”

Osborne, Nino Magro, and Nate Piazzi, none of whom started the game, hammered home Cole’s assertion of his team’s top-to-bottom depth.