Seven months after helping to produce Section III Class AA team championship in their own backyard at Radisson Greens, five members of the Baldwinsville boys golf team would try to go further – and two of them, Maxwell Dec and Ben Donohue, would succeed.
The Section III state qualifying tournament began Thursday at Seven Oaks in Hamilton, mixing up golfers who had their regular seasons in the fall with those who did in the spring and had just advanced to this event earlier in the week.
Dec and Donohue were joined by Ryan Fecco, the individual sectional champion in the fall with a 71, along with Tim Garraffo and Zach Ravas. They ran into cold, wet conditions that cut the opening round to nine holes.
Still, it didn’t keep Donohue from shooting a 39 to tie Joe Morgan (West Genesee), Sam DePasquale (Whitesboro) and Matt Barton (Thousand Islands) for first place. Ravas had a 41, while Dec shot a 42.
All three of them advanced to Saturday’s final round, where drier conditions allowed for a full 18 holes. Donohue could not hold on to his share of the lead, but a score of 82 gave him a 27-hole total of 121 to tie him for seventh place.
Meanwhile Dec passed Donohue thanks to a 79 that put him at 121, alone in sixth place. Both Dec and Donohue were among the top nine finishers that will go to Cornell University’s course in Ithaca for next weekend’s New York State Public High School Athletic Association championships.
West Genesee’s Dylan Plis won the qualifier with a 74 in the final round and a nine-over-par total of 137, two shots ahead of his teammate, Morgan, along with Teddy Trosset (Cooperstown), Cody Thorp (Cazenovia) and Johnny Gruninger (Manlius-Pebble Hill). The other state qualifiers from Section III included Dec, Donohue, Barton and New Hartford’s Jack Angelucci.
