CAZENOVIA – From beginning to end, the Cazenovia baseball team’s 2024 season involved plenty of highs and lows. It just wanted to keep going longer than it ultimately turned out.
The no. 4 seed Lakers were ousted Thursday in the quarterfinals of the Section III Class B playoffs, unable to contain no. 5 seed Clinton, who gained a significant amount of payback in prevailing 10-1.
These same two teams had met nine days earlier and Cazenovia, on its home turf, crushed the Comets 12-0, but that came with ace Jack Donlin on the mound.
Since Donlin had gone two days earlier in the 9-2 sectional win over Skaneateles, it was Izaak Gilbert’s turn to pitch, and he was staked to a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the first inning when Taven Reilley doubled home Danny Bliss.
From there, though, Clinton pitcher Kyle Majka shut the door, only giving up six hits and snuffing out all possible Lakers rallies while accumulating 12 strikeouts.
Gilbert held up well until the fifth, when the Comets took off, scoring five times and forcing Bliss into relief duty, but Clinton got to him, too, with five more runs in the sixth to put the game away.
Majka augmented his mound effort by getting three hits and driving in two runs, while Vince Martino had a single, double and triple and scored three times as Aiden Soika’s pair of hits led to three RBIs and Clinton advanced to face Little Falls in the sectional semifinals.
So the Lakers’ season ended at 10-7, and Donlin, who doubled once more in his final game in a Cazenovia uniform, graduates, having hit .504 this season with five home runs and 18 RBIs to go with a single-season school record of 109 strikeouts in 56 1/3 innings.
Gilbert, Reilley, Cy Abbott and Jacob Cox also graduate, part of a group that led Cazenovia to the 2023 sectional Class B title game, while Bliss leads a returning class for 2025 that includes Bobby Livingston, Jake Hightchew, Nico Segall and Joey Awald.
