Now all the preliminaries are cast aside, and Baldwinsville and Fayetteville-Manlius were set to fight it out for boys golf supremacy in the CNY Counties League in a Monday-afternoon showdown at Woodcrest Golf Club.
In order to make this showdown as meaningful as possible, the Bees first had to make it past last Tuesday’s match at West Genesee, the defending Section III Class AA champions – and a team B’ville had toppled 198-200 back on Aug. 26 at Timber Banks.
Here, on the Wildcats’ home course at Westvale Golf Club in Camillus, B’ville had to be good, top to bottom, in order to hold off WG by a 185-189 margin, twice as large as the first match, but just as tense.
Ryan Fecco got it started, tying WG’s Dylan Plis for individual honors as both shot nine-hole scores of 35. Then the Wildcats’ Nick Bove had a 36 to put his team in front, but the Bees’ duo of Maxwell Dec and Matt Shipman answered with 38s to match another WG golfer, Joe Morgan.
The difference in the outcome lay in B’ville placing five golfers under 40, with Ben Donahue and Zach Ravas each shooting 39, something only one other Wildcats golfer, Jack Corcoran, could pull off as Mike DiPaola finished with a 41.
One more match remained before F-M, and B’ville handled it, defeating Cicero-North Syracuse’s Green team 189-229 at Timber Banks on Thursday afternoon.
Another blast of summer temperatures served as the backdrop for a Bees sweep of the top five positions. Garraffo, matching part with 36, beat out Dec and Fecco, who both shot 37. Shipman earned a 39 and Ravas got a 40, and all of them topped Hurley, who led C-NS Green with a 44.
Other than the F-M clash, B’ville would only have to face Liverpool on Friday before next week’s sectional AA tournament – which just happens to take place at Timber Banks.
