Baldwinsville’s boys tennis team has proven quite competitive against the top CNY Counties Leagues sides and ought to have an impact when the Section III Class A tournaments get underway.
Before all that, though, the Bees first had to deal with visiting West Genesee last Monday afternoon, and did quite well, but still lost to the Wildcats 4-3.
Scott Ferrari, in third singles, rolled past WG’s Justin Taylor 6-0, 6-2, but neither Austin Dukat nor Mike Schneid was able to secure games in their 6-0, 6-0 losses to, respectively, Brent Boleslav and Connor McGuigan.
Meanwhile, in doubles, Eric Johnson and Devin Murphy got an impressive 7-5, 6-2 victory over Connor Smith and Billy Viau, while in three sets Zach Leader and Matt MacConaghy, two games from defeat, managed to scrape past Nolan Ferris and Ian Swete 4-6, 6-4, 7-5.
Still, B’ville needed one more point, and could not quite find it. Hunter Cohen-Ciampichini and Nick Walker took a 6-2, 6-3 defeat to Garrett Boleslav and Alex Fox, while Mason Soeder and John Taylor lost to Anthony Stracqualursi and Aaron Wierbinski 6-3, 6-0.
At least the Bees got points in that match, which didn’t prove the case a day later, when it ran into unbeaten Fayetteville-Manlius and lost, 7-0, to the Hornets.
Nick Jerome played the closest singles match, taking a 6-3, 6-3 defeat to Thomas Wong, with Ferrari falling to Riley Ma 6-2, 6-1 and Taylor getting a 6-0, 6-0 defeat to Josh Druger.
A long second set in doubles saw Schneid and Soeder fall to Justin DeSorbo and Vince Sorrentino 6-0, 8-6, while Johnson and Murphy had a 6-3, 6-1 defeat to Mike Mintskovsky and Brooks Nagle. Walker and Cohen-Ciampichini ran into Dan Miron and Nick Westergaard in a 6-1, 6-1 defeat, with Leader and MacConaghy falling to Ravi Dhawan and Vince Grasso 6-3, 6-0.
It turned around again on Wednesday afternoon, B’ville taking on Oswego and shutting out the Buccaneers by that same 7-0 margin to improve to 7-5 on the season.
To preserve the shutout, Dukat and Murphy had to go to a third-set tie-breaker to edge past Alex Kemper and Kyle McCauley 7-6, 4-6, 7-6. Johnson and Leader handled Jake Gerber and Drazen Schrecengost 6-3, 6-1, while the teams of Schneid-Taylor and MacConaghy-Soeder also won in two sets.
Back in singles, Cohen-Ciampichini had little trouble in his 6-0, 6-1 sweep over Oswego’s Pat Dowdle. Walker got past Mike Chetney 6-1, 6-2, with Ferrari battling to a 6-2, 6-1 victory over Jake Jones.
