While the Baldwinsville boys lacrosse team may still hold the upper hand among area Class A sides, it has serious – and very familiar – competition for top honors in the Salt City Athletic Conference Metro division.
West Genesee welcomed the Bees to Mike Messere Field last Tuesday night and proceeded to put together a sensational all-around effot that was rewarded with a 9-8 victory, targuably he biggest of coach Eric Burns’ young tenure.
B’ville had prevailed by 8-4 and 9-2 margins when they met in 2022, but the theme in both games was that the Wildcats’ defense would not let the Bees run up the score on them.
So it was here again, the game evolving into the tense physical battle that key players on both sides knew well about, given that they had done the same battling for sectional honors in ice hockey during the winter.
It didn’t start that way, the Bees grabbing a 4-1 advantage only to see WG dominate the second quarter, gaining possessions and shutting down B’ville while charging to a 5-4 advantage.
From there, the game went back and forth the entire second half, neither side able to get away. Yet it was the Wildcats gaining the late lead and, in the closing seconds, making one more defensive stop.
Keegan Lynch and Carson Dyl both had two goals and two assists. Brayden Penafeather-Stevenson also converted twice, with Brady Garcia and Garrett Sutton landing single goals and assists going to Dylan Wirtheim and Ryan Quinn.
In goal, Nick Cary made seven saves, but WG counterpart Shane Staudt had 10 saves as, on the offensive end, eight different players netted goals, with only Jack Giannuzzi and Nolan Bellotti converting twice.
For three days, B’ville worked hard on what had gone wrong in this game. Then, when it returned to action Saturday against Section V’s Canandaigua, it unleashed a superb defensive effort of its own on the way to claiming a 10-1 victory.
All that B’ville allowed was a single goal, so it was only fitting that Patrick Otts, as an anchor of the Bees’ defense, earned the team’s “Manley Cup” prize for the game’s top performacne. Cary stopped seven of the eight shots he faced.
On the other end, Lynch, with his four assists, spread it around as Sutton, Dyl, Garcia and Ignazio LoMedico each scored twice. Penafeather-Stevenson also had a goal and Quinn gained two assists.
With a 7-2 overall record, B’ville charged into perhaps its toughest week of the regular season, three games in five days against Liverpool, Cicero-North Syracuse and Section V powerhouse Victor, the last two of them at home.
