The reigning Senior League World Series championship team will return to Bangor to defend their title next month.

The Paraguana Little League from Estada Falcon, Venezuela, earned its ticket to this year’s 10-team tournament at Mansfield Stadium by winning its second consecutive Latin America title Sunday.

The defending champs will face the U.S. Central winner in its first game of SLWS pool play at 8 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 12. That will be the last of four games on the opening day of play, which will start at noon when the host Maine District 3 champions square off against Canada.

The Venezuelan team may have a different look from the squad that finished 6-0 in the 2006 SLWS after rallying to edge Pearl City, Hawaii, 4-2 in the championship game.

Many players from that Paraguana Little League team also reached the final game of the 2004 Junior League World Series (ages 13-14) in Taylor, Mich., before falling to Tampa, Fla. 5-2, then competed in Senior League (ages 15-16) the last two years.

This year’s Venezuelan squad defeated Club de Leones Dolega Little League of Chiriqui, Panama, 10-5 in the Latin American final, capping off a run of six consecutive victories after a 4-3 loss to the Virgin Islands in its first game of pool play.

After suffering its lone loss in the 11-team tournament held at St. Maarten, Netherlands Antilles, Venezuela defeated Colombia 12-6, El Salvador 12-0, Dominicia 5-2 and Panama 4-2 to win its pool.

A 2-1 victory over the Aruba Center Little League of Santa Cruz, Aruba, advanced Venezuela to a rematch against the Panamanian champs in the Latin America final.

Panama had upended the unbeaten Pabao Little League of Willemstad, Curaco, 6-5 in its semifinal.

Venezuela joins Asia-Pacific champion Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands as teams that have qualified for this year’s SLWS.

The EMEA (Europe-Middle East-Africa) regional tournament will be held July 16-22 at Nettuno, Italy, while the Canadian tournament is slated for Aug. 2-9 at Vancouver, British Columbia.

Five U.S. regional championship tournaments are set for the following locations and dates: East at West Deptford, N.J., Aug. 3-9; South at Raburn County, Ga., Aug. 3-8; Central at Peru, Ill., Aug. 2-9; Southwest at Blytheville, Ark., Aug. 3-9; and West at Salem, Ore. July 29-Aug. 7.

The Maine District 3 championship will be decided July 24 or July 25.

Championship game time set

The championship game for this year’s Senior League World Series has been scheduled for 3 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 18.

That start is 30 minutes later than previous finals in the five years the SLWS has been held in Bangor. The change presumably was made to accommodate television coverage by ESPN, which will broadcast the SLWS final live on one of its stations for the first time this year.

Semifinal games, which involve the top two teams from each of the two five-team pools, will be held at 11:30 p.m. and 2:30 p.m. Friday, Aug. 17, followed by the tournament banquet that night.

A year ago the semifinals were held later in Friday, as the tournament banquet wasn’t held until after Saturday’s championship game because the Bangor Civic Center where the banquet is held wasn’t available on Friday.

This year the banquet site is available Friday, and tournament director Mike Brooker said Friday is a more preferable day for the banquet rather than Saturday after the tournament is completed and teams are more focused on their travel plans.