When their final game was over Sunday, players and coaches from the Vicksburg Venom bid a tearful goodbye to the baseball stage.

One of Vicksburg’s most successful youth baseball teams had spent five summers together. They won 164 games, three state championships, two USSSA Global World Series and three Governor’s Cup titles.

It came to an end on the same Halls Ferry Park fields many of them grew up on, the passage of time finally defeating the team so many opponents could not.

The Venom ended its five-year run in its second and final game of the day, a 17-8 loss to the West Monroe Warriors in the 12-year-olds’ Governor’s Cup championship game. The hiccup at the end did little to tarnish the legacy of the Venom, which will disband as its players pass on to the junior high ranks and beyond.

The Venom beat the East Ouachita All-Stars 16-7 in the semifinals earlier in the day.

“I’m very proud of them. We’ve only been in four Governor’s Cups. We won three and finished as the runner-up in the other,” Venom coach Todd Boolos said. “I’ll probably remember a lot of things that weren’t on the baseball field. Just being on the road together. We’d go bowling or play putt-putt. Those times are great memories. These kids and parents will be friends for life. I feel like I’ve got 11 sons instead of just one.”

For all their success, the Venom never seemed more dominant than at the Governor’s Cup. Since moving out of the coach-pitch division, they had won all three times they played in the tournament at their home park.

That dominance came to a swift and shocking end on Sunday.

West Monroe hit five home runs — two of them by Taylor Slaughter — and took command of the championship game by scoring nine runs in the top of the second inning. The outburst erased an early Venom lead and put the Warriors ahead 11-5.

The Venom had a couple of chances to get back in it, but left runners at second and third in the third inning, then again in the fifth while trailing 12-7. Clay Rikard hit a three-run homer in the top of the sixth inning and Josh Sullivan added a two-run shot two batters later to put it out of reach.

“We were coming off a huge high from winning the World Series last week. We played well this weekend. We just fell a little flat today,” Boolos said. “We just ran into a team that was playing a little better than us.”

John Austin Burris hit a three-run homer to give the Venom a 4-2 lead in the first inning, but it was the last hit the team got until the fifth.

The lackluster offensive showing was a 180-degree turnaround from the semifinals, when the Venom belted three home runs and had 10 hits in a rout over the East Ouachita All-Stars.

Lane Hynum hit two of the homers, including a two-run shot in the fourth that ended the game by the mercy rule. Will Pierce added a three-run shot, while Dale Griffith went 3-for-3 with a double and four RBIs.

Elsewhere in the Governor’s Cup:

• The Madison Mavericks ended the Clinton All-Stars’ 26-game winning streak with an eight-inning, 18-17 victory in the 6-year-olds’ championship game.

• The Vicksburg Warriors fought their way from deep in the bracket to reach the 10-year-olds’ championship game, but lost to the West Monroe Tigers 15-7. The Warriors were seeded eighth out of 11 teams heading into the elimination round.

• The last game of the tournament’s first weekend featured the most dramatic ending.

The Southwest Mississippi Braves scored four runs with two outs in the bottom of the seventh inning to send the 16-year-olds’ final to extra innings, then scored on a bunt single in the eighth to win 9-8 over Tri-County.