TURNER — Kyle Peterson walked off the field after the fifth inning and laughed. The smile on his face was that of incredulity.

“I feel fine,” Peterson said to his coaches. “I don’t know what it is, but I’m not tired.”

Peterson, who pitched this spring for the University of Maine at Farmington, made his first American Legion appearance of the season for Locke Mills on Thursday, and was uncharacteristically wild. He walked six batters and worked to a full count with a handful of others.

Ultimately, though, he still won the game.

Peterson scattered six hits and struck out four, helping Locke Mills to a 4-1 win over Andy Valley.

“My mechanics have been off lately. I haven’t pitched since college season was over,” Peterson said. “There were a couple innings where I found a groove, but it was tough.”

“Peterson found enough “grooves” to carry a shutout through six innings. The coaches in the dugout were thinking of lifting Peterson for the seventh, but thought better of it when he came off the field after the sixth.

“He normally doesn’t work himself into jams and then pitch out of them,” Locke Mills coach Bob Remington said. “We told him going out in the sixth, ‘One more inning and we’ll put Izaak in.’ Everything changed when he came in, he kept saying, ‘I got it, I got it.'”

With a 4-0 lead, Peterson allowed three singles and a run to score before retiring the side for the complete-game win.

“My changeup was working well, and my curve ball toward the last few innings was good,” Peterson said. “I got a little bit lucky tonight, too, and everyone was playing well in the field.”

It capped a frustrating day both at the plate and in the field for Andy Valley, which left 10 runners on base and had players run into uncharacteristic outs on the base paths.

“(Peterson) threw well, but I think we had some opportunities,” Andy Valley coach Wendell Strout said. “We had the bases loaded; we had guys on base. I think as a team, we looked flat. We had some base-running errors. We had some fundamental errors. But it’s the second game of the season. I think we’ll come around.”

A longer-than-usual first inning saw Locke Mills take the early lead. After two quick strikeouts, Izaak Mills and Ben Holmes walked, and Tyler Frost, fresh off a Class C state title with Dirigo, singled Mills in for a 1-0 lead.

Trent Rosenberg reached on an error and scored in the third, and Frost raced home after a pair of walks and a single behind him to push the visitors’ lead to 3-0.

Peterson helped his own cause in the fourth when he singled, reached third on an error and scored when Mills got caught in a rundown between first and second.

“That’s something I’ve noticed about this team, we tend to get a lot of walks, and we’re patient,” Peterson said.

Quinn Fogerty escaped the fifth and sixth innings without any further damage on the hill for Andy Valley, and Tyler Hutchinson closed the door with three outs in a row in the seventh, but Andy Valley could only muster one run in the final inning.

Hutchinson scored on an RBI single by Peyton Kennison with two outs in the final frame to finish the scoring.

Locke Mills travels to Poland Saturday for a doubleheader against Tri-County, while Andy Valley hosts Brunswick for a twin bill. Both sets of games begin at 9:30 a.m.

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