SOUTH PARIS – Locke Mills and Bessey Motors decided the Zone III American Legion regular season with an exciting doubleheader Saturday.

Locke Mills needed only a split to sew up the regular season title.

Bessey Motors needed a sweep to keep its hopes of catching the zone front-runners alive.

Locke Mills got what it needed in the first game, rallying from a 3-0 deficit down to its last out to win 4-3 in eight innings.

Bessey Motors salvaged the second game by scoring the winning run and spoiling Kyle Kipikas’ no-hitter on the final swing of the game for a 3-2 victory.

Locke Mills is now 16-4 and concludes its regular season on Monday. Bessey Motors ends the season 15-6 and will be the No. 2 seed in next week’s zone playoffs.

“We wanted to take the first one,” said Locke Mills’ Corey Wing, whose two-run single tied Game One with two out in the seventh. “We wanted to get that out of the way so we could relax.”

Bessey broke a scoreless tie in Game One with three unearned runs in the third on a bobble at shortstop and a two-run triple by Chris Henderson. Locke Mills starter Terry Collins (eight innings, zero earned runs, four hits, five Ks, four walks) gave up two more hits in the fourth, then held Bessey hitless the rest of the way.

The crooked number in the third looked like it would be more than enough for Bessey starter Andrew Stacy (seven innings, six hits, nine Ks, three walks) who cruised through the middle innings.

But Stacy’s luck changed with a dropped third strike to Richie Ross leading off the seventh that broke a string of seven outs in a row.

After a fly out, Shawn Marr’s single brought the tying run to the plate.

Stacy fanned August Reiss for the second out, but Karl Olson then loaded the bases when he reached on a grounder to first that handcuffed Henderson. A walk to Travis Brooks then got Locke Mills on the board.

Locke Mills’ good fortune continued when Brent Grenier lost Wing’s pop foul outside of third in the sun. Wing then lined the next pitch into left field to plate the tying runs.

“All day, he had been throwing me change-ups and he fooled me a bunch of times,” Wing said. “I just sat on change-up. I knew it was coming and he threw it right down the middle.”

Marr (three hits in the doubleheader) drove in the game-winner an inning later with a single to right-center off reliever Joe Baker that scored Quinn McAllister.

“I guess things aren’t meant to be sometimes,” said Bessey Motors coach Shane Slicer. “Those were some tough breaks. We make one of those plays on the pop up, the grounder or the dropped third strike and we’re out of the game, but for some reason it didn’t happen.”

“That’s three games in a row Marr has had the game-winning hit,” said Locke Mills coach Chris Olson. “We’ve had a lot of different people step up this year.”

Marr picked right up where he left off with an RBI single in the first inning of Game Two, but Bessey got the breaks from there, scoring a run in each of the first two innings without benefit of a hit off Kipikas (seven innings, one hit, 10 Ks, four walks).

Locke Mills tied it in the third on an unearned run. Bessey starter Corey Tielinen (seven innings, 0 earned runs, five hits, five Ks, two walks) held them in check the rest of the way.

Bessey got at least runner on base against Kipikas in every inning but the fifth and sixth but didn’t get a ball out of the infield until Mike Stacy’s game-winning single to right in the seventh.

“I liked the way we played today. We came ready to try to win and we matched a team as good as ours or better,” Slicer said. “I give them a lot of credit. For the full season, they played better than any other team.”