By the time they got to Memorial Day weekend, just one team was left standing from West Genesee in the Section III playoffs – and it wasn’t in lacrosse or baseball.
Instead, it was WG’s softball side carrying the Wildcats’ banner into a sectional Class AA semifinal Saturday at the Gillette Road Complex in Cicero, where it was a heavy underdog against defending champion and state no. 4-ranked Liverpool, whom it lost to twice during the season.
For most of the game, the Wildcats did outscore the Warriors – but paid an ultimate price for struggles in the first two innings and lost by an 8-3 margin.
Liverpool tagged WG pitcher Deanna Shackleton for three runs in the first inning and four runs in the second inning. Katie Yudin doubled, walked and drove in three of those runs, with Peyton Bellrose adding two RBIs. Gina Meyers and Jenna Wike also drove in runs.
Given all of that early support, Bellrose was cruising until the top of the fourth, when WG tried to fight its way back, scoring three runs, two of them driven home on Mallory Kovacs’ single that scored Emily Winton and Katie Drogo, the other on Grace Schnorr’s double that brought Kovacs home.
Once Bellrose got out of that jam, though, she settled down and finished with eight strikeouts, only allowing four hits overall, or one more than Liverpool’s Erika Sadowski got by herself.
At least the softball side got that far. Two days earlier, while both lacrosse teams and WG’s baseball side suffered defeat to end their respective title runs, these Wildcats were quite impressive on the road at no. 3 seed Rome Free Academy, shutting out the Black Knights 14-0.
It all got decided in the top of the second inning, when WG unloaded on RFA pitcher Alicia Swavely for eight runs. Not content with that, the Wildcats tacked on two more runs in each of the next three innings, eventually running its total to 14 hits as it took advantage of 10 Black Knights errors.
Mya Case had three of those hits, twice doubling and driving in two runs. Drogo and Kovacs scored three runs apiece as Drogo, Winton and Olivia Pontello each got two hits. Sierra Smith scored two runs as a Shackleton allowed just four hits in her five-inning stint.
West Genesee’s baseball team expected a return to the sectional finals – but its quest to end a 39-year title drought was thwarted again when the no. 4 seed Wildcats lost, 2-1, to no. 5 seed Baldwinsville in the May 26 sectional quarterfinal.
The Wildcats had late-season momentum, and in their three-game series on May 10-12, WG took two of three from B’ville, with the lone Bees victory a 6-5 decision where Cody Kaestle had pitched five innings, but had given up six hits and four walks.
Kaestle was far more effective the second time around. After surrendering a first-inning run, he was superb, limiting WG to a total of five hits and cutting his walks in half, to two, while recording five strikeouts.
Both of B’ville’s runs came in the top of the second inning, where hits by Zach Bush and Tom McKee allowed Cam Williams and Jarrod Williams to cross the plate. Bush and Cam Williams together accounted for four of the Bees’ six hits.
