ONONDAGA COUNTY – In a span of eight days, a good season for the West Genesee baseball team turned into something with far more potential for history.
By defeating Baldwinsville and getting back-to-back wins over both Cicero-North Syracuse and Fayetteville-Manlius, the Wildcats earned the outright SCAC Metro division regular-season title, emerging as a favorite for next week’s Section III Class AA playoffs – and the program’s first sectional title in 44 years.
It all began on May 27, when WG and Baldwinsville resumed a game they started nearly three weeks earlier, the affair dragging out to 12 innings before the Wildcats finally subdued the Bees 3-0.
It was 0-0 when rain halted the contest on May 27. When play resumed, the two sides endured three more scoreless frames until the top of the 12th, when WG got to Bees pitcher Luke Arvantides as Jacob Severson, Luis Suarez and Eric Korzeniewski scored those runs.
Between them, pitchers Nick Jessen and Ryan Klementowski pulled off the shutout, combining for 15 strikeouts and only allowing two hits.
Rained out a day later at Cicero-North Syracuse, WG made that game up on May 30 and proceeded to blitz the Northstars for nine runs in the first two innings on the way to a 13-3 victory.
Avenging an earlier 9-1 defeat to the Northstars, the Wildcats saw Markus Vogt, Talon Elkins and Jake DePalma join Severson, each earning a pair of RBIs as DePalma scored three runs.
Given all that early run support, Klementowski pitched five solid innings, limiting a potent C-NS lineup to three hits, before Wyatt Braun worked the last two innings of relief.
This made Tuesday’s rematch with the Northstars in Camillus carry even higher stakes. Jessen returned to the mound and pitched a gem – and with some late-game heroics, WG rewarded that effort, prevailing 3-1.
C-NS’s lone run came in the top of the first inning, when Corey Cartier doubled, went to third on a sacrifice bunt and scored on a groundout. And that was all Jessen would allow.
In inning after inning, Jessen’s mix of pitches completely flustered most of the Northstars’ lineup. Only Cartier, with three hits, solved Jessen, with everyone else held hitless.
Bryce Zicaro, pitching for C-NS, matched Jessen and kept the game 1-0 until, with two out in the bottom of the fifth, Vogt drew a walk, Jessen singled and DePalma, who had doubled earlier, ripped a single that scored Vogt and, with a throwing error, allowed Jessen to race home with the go-ahead run and put the Wildcats up 2-1.
Aidan Leaf’s RBI single in the bottom of the sixth doubled the margin. Jessen took it from there, retiring the last six batters he faced and striking out the side in the seventh to increase his total to 14 strikeouts.
Now if WG could sweep two games from Fayetteville-Manlius, it would have the league title, and it won the first of those games last Wednesday by a 22-4 margin, setting a season mark for runs.
And it clinched a share of the league title a day later by taking the rematch with F-M 12-4, netting 11 runs in the first three innings as Klementowski and Suarez both went deep for home runs and got four RBIs apiece. DePalma scored four runs and Dan Davis earned three hits.
