CENTRAL NEW YORK – With the benefit of its multi-use turf field the Cazenovia baseball team got its 2025 season underway, but did so with immense challenges on hand.
Gone was Jack Donlin, the pitching ace who in 2024 gave the Lakers 109 strikeouts in 56 1/3 innings while also hitting .520 at the plate with five home runs. Also gone were Taven Reilley and Izaak Gilbert, cornerstones of a team that in 2023 reached the Section III Class B title game.
What remained was a team which had plenty of room to learn and grow, which it started to do right away last Tuesday in its season opener, an 8-2 defeat to Mexico.
Danny Bliss got the start on the mound and, after giving up two runs in the top of the first inning, tossed four scoreless frames, keeping his team close.
However, the Tigers got to Bliss in the top of the sixth, chasing him amid a four-run rally which proved decisive as Carter Bowden and Zane Ison saw relief stints.
At the plate the Lakers only managed single runs in the first and seventh innings and just five hits, two of them by Joey Awald. Bliss walked and scored both Cazenovia runs as Awald was credited with an RBI.
When these same two teams met again on Friday on that same Cazenovia turf, it counted as a Mexico home game but the Lakers spoiled it, prevailing 10-7 for its first win of the season.
The Lakers scored runs in each of the first four innings, including three runs in the first and third. Bowden led the charge with a power surge that included two home runs which led to four RBIs.
Colin Stratton drove in two runs, with Awald, Ison and Nico Segall getting one RBI apiece. Max Nichiporuk earned the win as he pitched five innings before Ison closed it out, thwarting a late Tigers comeback.
Chittenango had its season opener Thursday against Homer at Gutchess Field, a tight contest where the Bears would take a 3-2 loss to the Trojans.
All of Homer’s runs came in the bottom of the third, two of them brought home on Dan Hardesty’s double. From there, Chittenango pitchers Evan Tianello and A.J. Valente maintained a shutout and combined for 12 strikeouts, Valente striking out the side in both of his innings.
Single runs in the fourth and fifth innings cut the Bears’ deficit to one, but the Trojans’ Chris Boylan threw two shutout innings of relief after starter Graydon Hickey exited.
