The Troy Ozone routed Elba 18-3 on Monday, earning a spot in tonight’s district tournament championship.

Troy has outscored opponents 69-5 over the first four games.

“They continue to feed off each other at the plate” Ozone head coach David Nelson said. “We are seeing it really good right now.”

Troy hit three more homeruns on Monday by Drew Nelson, Darryl Lee and Adrian Cardwell. In all Troy finished with 16 hits. Nelson and Lee led the way with three hits apiece while Press Jefcoat, Cardwell and Jacob Spivey each had two.

“I knew we had a lot of homeruns in our lineup, but we have continued to preach hitting line drives to the gap,” Nelson said. “They have bought in and have stayed committed to driving the baseball. Homeruns are a byproduct of making good swings, you can’t go to the plate with hitting homeruns as your approach.”

Troy scored nine early run’s in the first inning. Nelson led off the game with a home run to centerfield. Lee followed up with his two-outs later to give Troy a 3-0 lead. Spivey drove in two when he singled in both Skylar Kidd and Nate Braisted. Cardwell lined the third homerun of the inning over the wall in left to make it 7-0 and Nelson close out the inning when singled in both Jayden Jordan and Noah Prestwood.

Troy’s pitching shut down Elba in the game’s three innings, Austin Spivey picked up the win by throwing 1 1/3 innings. He let up one earned run on one hit and he struck out two batters.

Cardwell and Jordan pitched the game’s final 1 2/3 innings while allowing just one run.

“We continued to pitch well,” Nelson said. “We threw strikes and we worked ahead.”

Troy added four more runs in the second inning. Jefcoat scored both Bailey Sparrow and Lee and Braisted followed it up with a hard ground out to short to score Kidd. Troy scored their final run of the inning when Spivey reached on an error to score Jefcoat.

With Troy already up by 11 runs at 13-2 they put the game away when they scored five runs in the third to make the score 18-2. Elba was able to manage a run in the bottom of the third, but it wasn’t enough as the game ended via the mercy rule.

Troy will be back in action on Tuesday when they take on Andalusia at 6 p.m. for the District 9 Tournament Championship.

“Hopefully we will finish with strong play tomorrow night as we face a good Andalusia team on their home field for the championship.