It started as a simple notion – get the top spring sports teams from Fayetteville-Manlius and Jamesville-DeWitt together, since they are neighbors and rivals, but have long competed in separate leagues and classes.
By the time last Saturday night’s boys lacrosse thriller had ended in overtime, both sides could walk away knowing that the “Rivalry Cup” had fulfilled its purpose. The Hornets and Red Rams ended up splitting the varsity contests – J-D prevailing on the diamonds, F-M on the lacrosse fields.
And even the results were split down the middle in terms of lopsided wins gained by both sides followed by exciting battles where one team rallied late – but the other would prevail by one in games that went beyond regulation.
Starting it off at 2 p.m. on Saturday afternoon, F-M met J-D in girls lacrosse. Despite the Red Rams holding a 10-2 record, home-field advantage and a no. 22 state Class B ranking, it could not keep up as the Hornets, ranked no. 17 in the state in Class A, won by a 15-7 margin.
For a while, it was tight, the two sides trading goals and J-D only trailing by one, 7-6, when they reached the break. But F-M, who had routed Baldwinsville and Westhill earlier in the week, put a halt to the Rams’ own three-game win streak by dominating the second-half draws and turning possessions into scoring plays.
In particular, Mary Trop trounced J-D whenever she got the chance, pouring in seven goals to match the Rams’ entire output and adding an assist. Amanda Cramer added four goals and one assist, with Katie Shanley getting a goal and three assists. Sydney DiGirolamo, Kiera Shanley and Jamison Seabury added goals. Annie Steigerwald and Allison Macrae picked up assists.
When J-D had that early success, Lizzie O’Brien set the pace, eventually getting a three-goal hat trick. No other Rams player had multiple goals, though, as Ana Dieroff, Riley Burns, Katie Lutz and Lindsay MacLachlan had one goal apiece. Chloe Loewengurth and Ali Durkin added assists.
At 3:30, attention turned to softball, where J-D, a perennial power, gave up the first run to F-M, but took over from there as the Red Rams rolled past the Hornets 6-1.
In the top of the first inning, Kathryn Colone singled and scored on Isabella Bastian’s RBI. From there, though, the Hornets were shut down, managing just two hits overall against Rams pitcher Amanda Sumida, who also surrendered four walks, but struck out nine.
Meanwhile, J-D’s hitters pecked away, using single runs in the second and third innings to move ahead for good, and then scoring twice in the fourth and fifth innings, the display including home runs by Makenzie Keeler and Shayna Myshrall.
Myshrall also doubled, scored twice and earned a pair of RBIs. Sarina Alexander added a single, double and RBI as Sumida notched two hits, Sara Gow managed an RBI and Carly O’Hern scored a run.
The baseball game between J-D and F-M began at 4:30 and provided all kinds of excitement, including a seventh-inning comeback that dragged the affair to eight innings before the Rams pulled it out, edging the Hornets 7-6.
Once it scored three runs in the bottom of the first and knocked out Hornets starter Colin Green, J-D found that, when it twice tried to add to that lead, F-M twice answered with a run. Still, a sixth-inning tally left the Rams in front, 6-3, and three outs from victory.
F-M didn’t care for this, and stunned the home side with three runs in the top of the seventh to tie it, 6-6, ruining an otherwise exemplary relief effort from Sean Hlywa, who had replaced starter Josh Kowalczyk in the fifth inning.
Hlywa settled down, though, and forced the game to extra innings. There, in the bottom of the eighth, the Rams pushed across the winning run against a tiring Peter Miller, who had worked more than six innings after Green’s early exit.
Andrew Leclair went four-for-five to lead J-D’s attack, scoring three runs. Matt Cappelletti had two hits and three RBIs, while Casey Kretsch added three hits and drove in a pair of runs. F-M, in defeat, saw Colin Sommers gain three RBIs as Gary Smith drove in two runs and Anthony Nucerino scored twice.
By the time the baseball battle was over, the featured attraction – J-D hosting F-M in boys lacrosse – was underway, and it didn’t disappoint, with the state Class B no. 1-ranked Red Rams staging an epochal comeback, only to fall to the Hornets 12-11 in overtime.
Having taken its first loss of the season to Cazenovia earlier in the week, J-D was eager to bounce back, but F-M, off back-to-back defeats to Cicero-North Syracuse and Auburn, proved hungrier, blanking the Rams in the first quarter and then catching fire with its offense to build an 8-3 halftime lead.
Perhaps taking a cue from the state Class A championship girls basketball team honored at halftime, J-D kept F-M from putting the game away and then, in the fourth quarter, made an inspired charge, erasing its 11-6 deficit with five unanswered goals.
No one could win it, though, and it pushed to overtime, where F-M’s Zach Van Valkenburgh won the face-off. After a time-out, the Hornets passed the ball around until Donovan Welsh flung it past J-D goalie Dylan Fleischmann for the game-winner.
That was Welsh’s fourth goal of the night, part of an F-M lineup where Mac Fish and James Rettinger scored twice and four others – Tyler Papa, Ryan Cicci, Dan Burnam and Brett Barlow – earned single goals, Luke Hamel joining Rettinger, Papa and Cicci in the assist column.
On J-D’s side, Grayson Burns and Griffin Cook both found the net three times, with Ryan Archer adding a goal and two assists. Jacob Rivasi, Jack Mulvihill, Vinnie Digristina and Carson LaRussa got one goal apiece and Andrew Barclay added an assist. Fleischmann finished with 11 saves, two more than F-M counterpart Ryan Boshart.
