CORTLAND – A successful season for the Baldwinsville boys tennis team culminated in its second-place finish to Fayetteville-Manlius at Wednesday’s Section III Class A championships at SUNY-Cortland.
Four different times, Bees and Hornets players would reach the finals, and F-M won three of them, with Antonio Marsallo providing the exception in first singles.
Not dropping a set, Marsallo blazed past Auburn’s Ryan Stechuchak 6-1, 6-1 in the quarterfinals, then handled Liverpool’s Justin Barrett 6-2, 6-0 before a title match where he rolled past F-M’s David Fernando 6-0, 6-4.
Both of the Bees’ doubles teams had runner-up finishes, including Max Funicello and Nick Licciardello, who worked from a no. 2 seed.
Funicello and Licciardello blanked Fred Butler and Tom Carson (Syracuse East) 6-0, 6-0 and rolled past Michael Clark and Rory Fitzgerald (Auburn) 6-0, 6-1 to reach the finals. There, both sets against F-M’s Jaden Duggal and Davin Woolridge were close, but the Hornets’ pair prevailed 7-6, 7-5.
Over in second doubles, Andrew Jung and Connor Tutor beat Lucas Maniccia and Henry Sweeney (Oswego) 6-3, 6-2, and then took a 6-1, 6-2 semifinal over Syracuse East’s Kipling Korba-Davis and Mason Thai 6-1, 6-2, only to lose a 6-1, 6-4 final to the Hornets’ Fergus Brady and Andrew Li.
In third singles, Logan Bolton worked past Cicero-North Syracuse’s Brandon Nguyen 6-3, 6-3 and had a similar effort to beat Liverpool’s Cole Potrzeba 6-3, 6-4 in the semifinals. But another F-M player halted Bolton’s title quest, Colin Byer taking the final 6-3, 7-5.
Mason Doan, in second singles, had to rally to beat Utica Proctor’s Mathew Marvel 3-6, 6-4, 6-1 in the quarterfinals and, in a three-set semifinal, lost to Christian Brothers Academy’s Soren Kang 6-3, 6-7, 6-4. But Doan still finished third with a forfeit over Oswego’s Joshua Chun.
