Staff photo / Preston Byers The Poland 10U baseball team celebrates Wednesday’s Little League district final victory against Canfield at Fields of Dreams in Boardman.

BOARDMAN — The first time Poland and Canfield met in the Little League 10U baseball District 2 tournament, Canfield jumped ahead early, forcing Poland to claw back en route to a win.

On Wednesday in their second meeting at Boardman’s Fields of Dreams, however, Poland flipped the script, exploding for four runs in the top of the first inning and cruising from there to a 6-0 victory to win the district title and advance to the state tournament.

“We’ve been preaching starting fast to these kids because we have the capability, we have the bats to do it, but we’ve been kind of slow,” Poland coach John Crook said. “For some reason, they love playing the fourth through sixth inning and not the first through third. But tonight, we finally showed up in the first inning, and obviously with [Carmen Cylar] throwing strikes and him throwing as well as he does, that’s pretty much all we needed.”

Poland, which eked out a 4-3 win against Canfield in the semifinals last week, settled in quickly Wednesday.

After a leadoff out, Poland’s Luca Tamburro got things started with a single, which was quickly followed by consecutive hits courtesy of Anthony Crawford, Cylar and John Crook, a sacrifice fly by Liam Rudolph and another hit by Shawn Farley. By the time Canfield starting pitcher Ethan DiLisio struck out the final batter of the half-inning, Poland had taken a 4-0 lead.

“It was just a combination of they put good wood on the ball, and there were a couple of 50-50 plays that just didn’t quite go our way,” Canfield coach Andrew Zunic said. “We had the diving attempt in left field; if that’s three feet closer to him, the inning probably ends with a zero. That’s baseball.”

Despite needing to respond to the outburst, Canfield proved unable to do so, as Cylar dominated from the mound. Cylar remained perfect through the first three innings, and he had struck out half a dozen batters before surrendering his first and only hit of the game, a Carter Shaw bunt that he momentarily fumbled when fielding in the fourth inning.

“Carmen’s a beast,” Coach Crook said. “When he’s on, he’s one of the best 10-year-olds in this area, probably one of the best 10-year-olds in the state. So when he’s throwing strikes and our defense’s playing behind him, not many kids are gonna hit him.”

Even after John Crook replaced Cylar on the mound, Canfield struggled at the plate, as Crook sat down the side in order in the fifth.

But Canfield had a glimmer of hope in the sixth and final inning, with DiLisio and Cam Wiand reaching base on a hit-by-pitch and walk, respectively. The hope did not last long, though, and an attempted squeeze bunt with two outs proved unsuccessful, allowing Poland to officially celebrate a district championship shutout.

“We just didn’t have it,” Zunic said. “We got down early, and they jumped on a few pitches. Ethan DeLisio did an excellent job bouncing back and not putting up any more runs the rest of the game. But we just couldn’t figure out Carmen. We knew he was a great pitcher, and we just had a hard time finding any holes. We put the ball in play a lot, but just not with a lot of hard contact.

“The last game [against Poland], we jumped out early,” he added. “And that momentum is a big deal with these 10-year-olds because they get up, they get down so easily. And we were able to jump out early, and then they slowly kind of came back a little bit. And today, we just never could quite get off the mat after that first inning.”

With the district title comes a state tournament berth for Poland, which will travel to Loveland this weekend. The 10U tournament will begin Saturday and run through July 17 at Home of the Brave Park.

“We’re going to give them a couple days rest,” Coach Crook said. “We’re going to probably head out, all of us, on Friday. I think we play 4:30 Saturday afternoon. Hopefully, [we] get that first win and keep on moving on from there.”