Regardless of the verdict of Saturday’s state Class A championship game, Mike Messere’s large and towering place in Central New York sports history was secure with 841 wins, 15 state championships and all kinds of other accolades afforded the West Genesee coaching legend.
But the Wildcats wanted win no. 842 and state title no. 16 to send Messere off in the most grand manner, and Ward Melville denied it to them, the Long Island superpower prevailing 15-2 at St. John Fisher College in Pittsford.
This was WG’s third appearance in the state final since winning its last crown in 2008. Ward Melville was defending the state champion, having rallied to stun Pittsford in overtime in this same game 12 months ago.
That Ward Melville stood as the last opponent only seemed appropriate. Six different times, Messere’s Wildcats had opposed the Patriots with the state title at stake, and had gone 3-3 in those games.
Some of the younger WG players remembered how Ward Melville has pasted them 16-4 in the 2013 state final, and were primed to atone for it. They went through all the rituals done by Wildcats teams of the past, straight down to the special haircuts.
And it didn’t help one bit at the outset, Ward Melville jumping out in front with back-to-back goals from Ryan Pallonetti in the first three minutes. Then Malachy McAvoy and Mike Giaquinto hit on goals 12 seconds apart, and it was 4-0, forcing WG into a rare early timeout.
At that point, the Wildcats didn’t have a shot, but when it finally got one at the 5:32 mark, Ryan Sheehan converted to get his team on the board – which the Patriots’ Lucas Flynn answered 25 seconds later.
Trailing 6-1 as the first quarter ended, WG had not taken a single shot other than Sheehan’s tally. That had to change quickly if things were to get closer – and it did not.
Instead, in a six-second span, Dylan Pallonetti and then Giaquinto, winning the faceoff from Pat Stanistreet, quickly passed it to Matt Grillo, who fired it home to make it 8-1.
Only now did the Wildcats calm down a bit, following a goal by Jack Howes. Yet it couldn’t cut further into its large deficit, and with Ryan Pallonetti striking for the third time and Liam Davenport adding a goal, WG now found itself down 10-2 at halftime.
Not letting up, Ward Melville s truck again 45 seconds into the second half with Zach Hobbes’ man-up goal. And it got worse when goalie Luke Staudt, attempting to clear the ball out, had it stolen by Grillo, who shot it into an unoccupied net.
It continued from there, Grillo scoring twice more to extend it to 14-2 and get the game to a running clock with more than three minutes left in the third quarter.
Ward Melville breezed from there to a 10th state title, and third in six years. Much was made later about the Wildcats’ effort in this game, but even if it had done everything at the high level Messere always demanded, the odds of beating the Patriots were still quite long.
With disappointment at the outcome and sadness over missing an opportunity at a perfect ending, West Genesee would return home knowing that, in 2019, it will, for the first time in more than four decades, be led by new coaches after the retirements of Messere and his long-time assistant, Bob Deegan.
