CAMILLUS – Even with nothing else as a reference point, the West Genesee ice hockey team’s 4-2 victory over Suffern in Thursday’s championship game of the James P. Snell Wildcat Classic at Shove Park was meaningful because it knocked off an undefeated Mounties side that sat atop the state Division I rankings.
However, the circumstances made it even bigger.
With the win, the Wildcats’ long-time head coach, Frank Colabufo, reached 500 career victories, something only four other coaches in New York State has achieved.
Since he began coaching WG in 1994-95, the team has established itself as a premier hockey program, winning a string of Section III titles and three state Division I championships.
Of course, the most recent state title, earned last March, came at the expense of Suffern, who arrived in Camillus bent on getting a bit of payback and also spoiling Colabufo’s milestone.
But this was not the same WG side that had started the season 2-2. Winners of four in a row, the Wildcats saw Jonah Vormwold involved in both scoring plays in the opening period and went in front of the Mounties 2-0.
A third Vormwold point made it 3-0 in the second, WG taking full advantage of its chances while its defense, constantly threatened, turned every Suffern chance away, Luke Beck eventually earning 33 saves.
Early in the third period, Suffern scored twice, cutting the margin to 3-2. Yet with 3:12 to play, off another timely pass from Vormwold (who was named tournament MVP), Christian Ball skated in on a breakaway and fired home the clinching goal.
This was Ball’s second goal of the game as he also picked up an assist, while Vormwold and Jacob Pensabene had the other goals.
Before all this, Colbaufo earned win no. 499 when WG defeated Massena 4-1 in Wednesday night’s opening-round game, breaking out of a 1-1 tie with a goal in the second period before scoring twice in the third to get away.
Those four goals came from four different players – Ball, Jesse Desena,Ryan Long and Carson Berg. Desena joined Pensabene, Vormwold and Evan Zoanetti in the assist column. Beck stopped 18 of Massena’s 19 shots.
A week passed following the tournament before WG was back in action – and that would come when the Wildcats went to the Twin Rinks to face Cicero-North Syracuse, and would get shut down most of the way and settle for a 1-1 tie.
C-NS jumped out of the gate by taking the game’s first eight shots and answered a power-play goal from Nick Meluni with a short-handed tally from Tyler Milewski in the final seconds of the first period.
From there, Northstars goalie Leyton Sullivan took over. He stopped all 15 WG shots he faced in the second period and kept it going late in the third period, thwarting Vormwold on a last-minute breakaway to send it to overtime.
Then, as time ran out in OT, Sullivan again came through, stopping Desena and Ball point-blank for his 34th and 35th saves to preserve the tie.
All of this made the Wildcats quite motivated to come home a night later and, against Auburn, run up goals in a 10-1 rout of the Maroons.
Remarkably, WG got to double digits without a single player scoring twice. Vormwold, Long, Berg, Desena, Jackson Pensabene, Jacob Pensabene, Luke Alfieri, Collin MacDonald, Michael Vetter and Kaiden McBride all found the net, with Matt Schneid getting three assists. Vetter, Zoanetti, Greg Wood and Brayden Carvel had two assists apiece.
