After ending an 11-year Section III title drought, the East Syracuse Minoa baseball team needed to win twice in the Class A regional round to earn a trip to Binghamton for next weekend’s state final four.
On Thursday, ESM would face Section X’s Franklin Academy at Clarkson University in the Class A regional playoff opener. A win would bring them back to OCC for a regional final Saturday against Section II champion, Queensbury.
The Spartans would prevail, 7-3, but it wasn’t that easy. The teams traded first-inning runs before ESM went in front for good in the third, scoring twice as Josh Gilkey doubled and scored on a sacrifice fly before a Franklin error produced another run.
Jimmy Grififn’s RBI single in the fourth plated Penoyer, a run Franklin would match. So it was 4-2 going to the sixth, when at last ESM got away with a three-run rally that included Colin Williams’ double and run-scoring hits by Gilkey, Sam Jenkins and Ryan Seburn.
Meanwhile, Tanner Waldman pitched and, following up on his sectional semifinal win, went all seven innings, allowing five hits and striking out five. More importantly, he saved the rest of the staff from having to work.
Now it was on to the regional final against Queensbury, and in this high-stakes clash of Spartans squads, ESM never recovered from what took place in the early stages as it lost a 7-3 decision.
Seburn, the winning pitcher in two playoff games (including the sectional final against Whitesboro), was back on the mound, but just like Whitesboro did, Queensbury caused first-inning damage. Walks led to the first run, and with two out Queensbury three times delivered singles, one of them by Jack Sylvia that plated a pair of runs.
A walk to start the top of the second ended Seburn’s day. Ricky Neuser took over and kept things quiet until the third, when Queensbury struck for three more runs, Sylvia’s two-run triple the key blow.
Only in the bottom of the third did ESM’s offense get going with a run coming home helped by Lukas Grabowski’s double. Single runs followed in the fifth and seventh innings, not enough to catch Queensbury, who tacked on a run of its own in the seventh.
Queensbury, who will face Canandaigua Friday in the state semifinals (the other semifinal pits Lakeland against Wantagh), saw pitcher Noah Edwards last all seven innings, limiting ESM to seven hits, two of them by Grabowski.
