Every West Genesee baseball player, coach and fans knows about it, openly talk about it – and want to get rid of it.
“It’, of course, is the fact that the Wildcats have not won a Section III championship since 1977. It almost happened a season ago, WG making it all the way to the sectional final before Cicero-North Syracuse stopped them.
Now, the challenge for head coach Kevin Krause was replacing a large group of talented seniors and finding someone on the mound that could be as reliable as Evan Reichel was in recent years.
WG was supposed to start its new schedule of three-game series against CNY Counties League foes on April 4-7 against Baldwinsville, but snows forced a postponement.
It had dried up, though, in time for the Wildcats to start its next series against Auburn last Wednesday afternoon, and one big inning was all the Maroons needed to hand WG a 4-2 defeat.
Marshall Winn got the start, but ran into trouble when Auburn plated three runs in the top of the second inning. All told, Winn lasted three innings before Billy O’Brien replaced him and got his own three-inning stint. Keith Hagen and Kyle Korzeniewski also pitched.
Of WG’s five hits, two of them were led by Winn. Colin BeVard and Dan Purcell each had a hit and run scored, with Nick Graham and Chris Petosa also notching hits. But WG had just five total hits against the Auburn pitching duo of T.J. Baranick and Stephen Bennett.
Then came the first formal series of the season – reuniting West Genesee with Cicero-North Syracuse, even though there were plenty of different faces as compared to last June’s sectional final.
In Game 1 last Thursday night, WG lost, 7-3, to C-NS, only getting two hits off Northstars pitcher Luke Dziados in his six innings of work. The Wildcats fell behind 7-1 before scoring twice in the top of the seventh to make it a bit closer.
Still, WG only had three hits, one each by BeVard, Winn (who also drove in runs) and Graham. Mike Bonacci pitched four innings before Kevin Donohue took over and threw two scoreless innings of relief.
Game 2 of the series came a day later, and the Wildcats broke into the win column by defeating C-NS 4-3, more than doubling its total to seven hits, two each by Brian VanBeveren, Matt Frazee and Matt Kot as VanBeveren and Frazee got one RBi apiece.
BeVard pitched five innings, striking out seven and holding C-NS to three hits. It took the trio of Graham, Korzeniewski and Hagen to work the last two innings of relief to help WG hang on.
The series ended Saturday with the Wildcats back home and unable to make it back-to-back wins, falling to C-NS 10-1. Despite a second-inning run, WG again struggled at the plate, only getting three hits and seeing the Northstars break it open by scoring six times in the top of the sixth inning.
Donohue took the loss, with Will Haag and Billy O’Brien working in relief. Winn managed two of the Wildcats’ three hits, including a double, while Petosa had the other hit.
Another series gets underway on Monday, the Wildcats facing Syracuse, who was swept by Liverpool in its opening series of the season.
