CENTRAL NEW YORK – The last time the Skaneateles baseball team got a glimpse of Cazenovia, it was a sideways glance, the other set of Lakers exiting the field at Onondaga Community College as Skaneateles celebrated winning the 2023 Section III Class B championship.
And the two rivals would open the 2024 season against one another last Thursday on Cazenovia’s brand-new artificial turf field at its high school complex, and this time Skaneateles lost the Laker dual by a score of 10-7.
Skaneateles did score first, getting a run off Jack Donlin in the top of the first inning, but Cazenovia countered with two-run rallies in the first and third to go in front 4-1.
Even when Skaneateles cut the margin to 4-3 in the top of the fifth, Cazenovia roared back with five runs in the bottom of the fifth, three of them racing home on a bases-clearing double by Dan Bliss.
Late in the game, Sknaeateles would get some runs off Cy Abbott, who relieved Donlin in the fifth, but it didn’t prove enough as Keelen Maren got a pair of RBIs, with Shea Musso and Hugh Carroll each scoring twice. Carroll, Sean Olley, Declan Pfau, Eric Michel and Torin Bennett drove in single runs.
Olley pitched four innings, with relief help from Pfau and Calvin Richardson, who each went one inning. Combined, the trio did get six strikeouts, but allowed 10 hits.
This followed, by a day, the Skaneateles softball team making the same trip to the same new turf in Cazenovia and getting the same ultimate result – in this case, a 5-1 defeat.
A two-run first got Cazenovia in front and it earned its three other runs in the third after Skaneateles cut it to 2-1, Skylar Simmons scoring the run after a walk, but the visitors were held to just two hits overall by Paige Reilley, who struck out 11.
Jordan-Elbridge’s baseball team would open its 2024 season a day later, against Altmar-Parish-Williamstown, and one inning proved the difference in a 5-2 defeat to the Rebels.
The Eagles tied it 1-1 in the second on Sean Gray’s single after APW got a run in the first, but when the Rebels struck for three runs in the top of the third, it got the lead for good.
Gray drove in a second run in the bottom of the sixth, but it did not prove enough. Both Gray and Emerson Derby finished with a pair of hits as Gage Davey and David Dominick scored the runs.
