With the best season in program history behind them, the Solvay baseball team is charged with a simple task – do all of that again and perhaps go a bit farther to earn a first-ever state Class B championship.
Those higher expectations are accompanied by the knowledge that, as reigning Section III Class B champions, the Bearcats are bound to get the best efforts of all of its opponents.
In all of this, it helps to have an ace, and Jake Dippold lived up to that moniker in last Monday’s opener against Bishop Grimes, keeping the Cobras off the board as Solvay prevailed by an 8-0 margin.
The senior left-hander worked under new state-mandated pitch count rules, but still lasted six innings, holding Grimes to three hits and not walking a batter while earning six strikeouts.
At the plate, the Bearcats pecked away at Grimes pitchers Shawn Gashi and Matt Tarby for two runs in each of the first four innings. Mike Cimino’s home run supplied the big blow as he finished with four RBIs, while Josh Posnick scored twice. Posnick, Dippold, Joey Guadagnolo and Nate Kosecki each drove in one run.
Meanwhile, Solvay’s neighbor and rival, Westhill, began a new era as Ted Klamm, the former Bishop Ludden head coach, takes over the Warriors, ironically with former Bishop Grimes coach Mark Kelley serving as an assistant.
In Klamm’s debut, Westhill visited Jordan-Elbridge and built a big early lead, only to squander most of it before hanging on to beat the Eagles 7-6.
Already up 2-1, the Warriors threatened to break it open with four runs in the top of the second. Ben Coates and Corey Frassica, with three hits apiece, led Westhill’s lineup as Coates got two RBIs, with Frassica, C.J. Walsh and Philip Zollo each driving in a single run.
J-E fought back, chasing Westhill starter John Geer with four runs in the bottom of the fourth as Carson Ashby doubled and got three RBIs, with Jonah Patrick, Dylan Groom and Dan Kuenhle also driving in runs.
It took Westhill notching a run in the top of the sixth to make it 7-5, and though the Eagles pulled back within one in the bottom of the sixth, the Warriors held on as Coates, working two innings in relief of Geer and Tom Cunningham, earned the saves. J-E’s Tristan Ashby took the loss.
Bishop Ludden tapped former Major League pitcher (and Syracuse Sports Hall of Fame member) John Johnstone to take over as head coach, and the Gaelic Knights debuted on Wednesday at traditional power Fabius-Pompey, where it lost, 5-1, to the Falcons.
Pitchers Kevin Hawk (for Ludden) and Chris Wagner (for F-P) dueled until the bottom of the fifth, when the Falcons extended its 1-0 lead and chased Hawk by scoring four decisive runs. Wagner struck out 11 and maintained a shutout until the seventh, when Ed Walser drove home Pat McGarvey.
