Editor’s Note: After the cancellation of the rest of the high school winter sports state tournaments, we’ll be periodically looking back at the top local teams and athletes from the 2019-20 season. This edition features Baldwinsville winter sports.
From the basketball court to the bowling alley to the swimming pool, it was, in many different ways, a memorable winter for Baldwinsville’s group of varsity winter sports teams.
On a team and individual basis, Section III championships were earned, records were broken, and so much promise was fulfilled, even if, at times, the ending was not quite what Bees fans imagined.
A featured player throughout this story was boys basketball sophomore J.J. Starling. What he and his B’ville teammates did, in the course of 23 games, caused more excitement than the program had ever seen.
It began Dec. 3 with a win over long-time powerhouse Jamesville-DeWitt and continued through all kinds of personal milestones for Starling, who broke the school scoring record on his way to averaging more than 28 points per game.
And so many of those games were memorable, from the big fourth quarter Starling used to knock off reigning state champion West Genesee Jan. 3 to last-second shots that twice took out rival Liverpool and, in the sectional playoffs, impressive wins over Auburn and Rome Free Academy.
All along, Starling got enough help from the likes of Dan Fabrizio, Bo Nicholson and Chase Trombley to push the Bees to the brink of its first-ever sectional title, only to get stopped in the title game by Corcoran, with everyone now wondering if Starling, recruited by the likes of Syracuse University, will stay for his remaining two years.
While all this was going on, B’ville’s girls basketball team was dead-set on ending its own sectional title drought, dating back to 1995, and up until the end seemed poised to do so.
Going 19-1 in the regular season, the Bees had reliable anchors in seniors Katie Pascale and Jordan Roy, strong support from junior Hannah Mimas and big-time production from the sophomore duo of Ola Bednarczyk and Sydney Huhtala, plus consistent bench contributions from the likes of Kyrah Wilbur.
This worked against every opponent except one – Cicero-North Syracuse, who split two regular-season games with B’ville and then, in the March 7 sectional final at Onondaga Community College’s Allyn Hall, snuffed out the Bees’ title drams in a 52-37 decision.
That same day down on Long Island, another fine B’ville athlete, senior boys swimmer Nick Schultz, was making his own history, nearly earning a state championship in the 100-yard breaststroke.
Schultz finished second to Dansville’s Aidan Kreiley, but that wasn’t the big story. All season long, Schultz had improved his time in the 100 breaststroke and, like any good swimmer, peaked at the end.
First in the qualifying round of the state meet, and then again in the finals, Schultz bettered the Section III record in the 100 breaststroke once held by Liverpool’s Garrett Clarke, ultimately establishing a new mark of 56.14 seconds to cap off his high school career.
For all the accolades elsewhere, though, the lone Section III team title for B’ville in winter sports came from an unlikely source – boys bowling.
These Bees had only gone 6-6 in the regular season, but it saved its best performance for the Feb. 9 sectional tournament at Utica’s Pin-O-Rama, where it led from the second game onward and bested runner-up Oswego by 250 pins.
Not only that, but B’ville’s Tanner Rozyczko led all individuals with a six-game total of 1,450, an average of 241.67 per game, while Dylan Williams was sixth with a 1,296 set. Unfortunately, the Bees’ hopes of competing in the March 15 state tournament at Strike-N-Spare Lanes was wiped out by the COVID-19 outbreak.
Elsewhere in winter sports, B’ville’s ice hockey team fell again in the sectional semifinals in a 3-2 thriller to eventual champion Syracuse, but it had beat the Cougars earlier in the season to win its own Bobby Conklin Memorial Tournament.
And in indoor track, B’ville missed, by just three points, winning the sectional Class AA title Feb. 8 at SRC Arena, Connor Waldron (600 meters) and Steven Miller (weight throw) both advancing to the state meet in March, while on the girls side Lauren Addario and Karen Ekure both qualified for the state meet, too, Ekure having claimed sectional honors in the 55 and 300-meter sprints.
