The Waterloo Millers ran into a determined Belleville Rockies club Friday morning in the opening game of the 43rd annual Midsummer Classic baseball tournament at Borsch Park in Valmeyer.

Later in the day, the host team Valmeyer Lakers delivered plenty of offense and held on at the end to win their first game of the tourney.

The Millers had a tough time against Rockies pitcher Mark Mueller, who took a no-hitter into the seventh inning in a 9-3 Belleville win.

The tone was set in the first inning when Waterloo failed to score despite having the bases loaded with one out. After that, Mueller settled down and held Waterloo hitless until designated hitter Nick Dunning crushed a home run over the left field fence. Belleville remained in control throughout, plating runs in the third, fifth, sixth and ninth innings.

The Millers finally got to Mueller in the ninth, plating two runs on back-to-back homers by Justin and Nick Dunning, but Belleville reliever Ryan Warnecke snuffed out the rally for the win.

Waterloo next plays at 11:30 a.m. on Saturday against Fairview Heights, who lost Friday against Cape Girardeau.

In the final game of Friday action, the Lakers went up big early and escaped in the ninth with a 10-8 victory over the St. Louis Printers.

Valmeyer took a 10-4 lead into the ninth inning, but the Printers hit a grand slam home run to make things interesting before the Lakers closed the door.

Valmeyer plays the St. Clair Division leading St. Louis Spikes at 4:30 p.m. on Saturday. The Spikes defeated Millstadt VFW on Friday to advance.

The championship game of the tournament is set for 3:30 p.m. Sunday.

(with reporting from Alan Dooley)