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Irish to host Ice Devils for hockey sectional game this Saturday

By Timothy Walton

File photo: BHS's Adam Kurek prepares to save a shot by ND's Kyle Gannon in the last matchup on January 19, 2010.

Almost exactly a month after the last time the Notre Dame Fighting Irish hosted cross town rival Batavia Ice Devils, the two teams will meet again. This time, there is more at stake. Saturday at 1:00pm the rivalry will continue into sectional play in front of what is sure to be a packed house at the Falleti Ice Arena, as the third seeded Irish will host the sixth seeded Ice Devils.

"I'm not sure if I sure be nervous or excited to play Batavia again", says Notre Dame senior Ivan Madafferi. "It's going to be one of the biggest things I will have a chance to be a part of."

The two teams have already faced off twice this season and split the pair of games. Notre Dame defeted the Devils in Batavia's David M. McCarthy Memorial Tournament 4-1, and Batavia took revenge during the second game and was victorioious 2-1.

"We'll prepare for the game just like we would for any other sectional game", says Batavia senior Will Mulcahy. "For us it helps playing Notre Dame because we always play our best hockey against them, so playing them in sectionals is just a plus". Mulcahy lead the Ice Devils in points during the regular season with 21 goals and 6 assists.

Both Notre Dame and Batavia played in the same division for the season where Notre Dame finished in second and Batavia followed in third. The way the seedings work, more teams join into the bracket for sectionals which gave the two teams the seeding differential and the opportunity to play again.

"We have been preparing for this all season" says Batavia senior Corey Kocent. "Sectionals is a true test to see how far your team has come by season end. At the beginning of the year, we made it clear that we wanted to win a sectional title."

The two teams have not faced each other in sectional play since the 2003 playoffs, where Batavia came away victorious and eventually moved on to the state championship game.

The Irish finished this season with a 12-5-2-1 (W-L-T-OTL) record and Batavia finished at 10-9-1.

Notre Dame has found much success this season with junior goaltender Tom Dehr, who is ranked one of the top goalies in Section V. He finished the season with a save percentage of 91.9% and just 1.92 goals allowed per game.

Although he may be an advantage for the Irish, their tendency to take penalties may be the advantage for Batavia, who was the least penalized team with only 109 penalty minutes, compared to the Irish who had 234.5 this season. To overcome this ND senior Jerod Adams says "we just have to worry about what's going on on the ice and keep focused on not take any bad penalties". "It's going to be key for us to not let the emotions of the building get to us", added Madafferi.

The winner of the game will move on to face the winner of  (2)Victor  vs (7)Canandaigua.

O-A punter getting serious attention from Division I recruiters

By Howard B. Owens

Five years of training and practice are starting to pay off for Jonathan Fisher, a punter for Oakfield-Alabama Central School.

According to his father, Kurt Fisher, he's been invited to Senior Camps at Division I schools, such as Syracuse, Rutgers, Louisville, W. Virginia and Illinois.

Currently, Fisher is ranked the #1 punter in New York on MaxPreps.com.

"He's put in a lot of time and effort," said Kurt Fisher. "It's nice to see it paying off for him."

This summer Fisher will be attending Senior Camps to showcase his talents in front of college coaching staffs.

He finished the 2009 season with 19 punts for 888 yards and a 46.7-yard punting average.

So far his invites for Junior Days include one on Feb. 20 at the University of Pennsylvania and on Feb. 27 at Syracuse. He'll also be participating in an upcoming session with college coaching staffs in Buffalo.

Fisher is on the verge of striking the big time in college football a season after another O-A product, Matt Waldron, put together a big year as the #1 kicker at Virginia Tech. Waldron made all 58 of his point-after attempts and 20 of his 23 field-goal attempts, with only one of his misses coming within 40 yards. He scored 108 points for the year.

At about 3:40 minutes into this video, you can watch Fisher practice his kicking during half-time of O-A's playoff game at Cal-Mum.

Enthusiasm, optimisim abound for 2010 season at Muckdog's hot stove dinner

By Howard B. Owens

Easily more than 200 people gathered at the Batavia Party House last night for the Batavia Muckdogs Booster Club's annual hot stove dinner and auction. There were plenty of laughs and people expressed a lot of excitement about the coming season, which could be a critical year for drawing enough community support to keep the team in Batavia.

At the podium, Brian Paris honors "The Voice of the Muckdogs," Wayne Fuller, for his many years of service to the team as the public address announcer and official score keeper. Fuller stepped aside from those roles after the 2009 season. But his voice won't be far from a microphone during the upcoming season; he'll serve as color man on WBTA's broadcast of games.

More pictures after the jump:

Todd Jantzi, left, and Patrick Weissand chat during the silent auction.

Brian Paris, left, and Ryan Gugel chat with a fan who drove to the dinner from Greece.

Board member Bill Kauffman gets a gift from the board honoring his service to baseball in Batavia.

Gretel Kauffman is in the foreground. Immediately behind her is local artist John Hodgins, watching the bidding progress for his winter landscape painting. It fetched $255, well above any other auction item.

Auctioneer Todd Jantzi makes a sale.

Daily News photographer Mark Gutman goofs when the camera gets turned on him for a change. Writer Alanna Stage gets a good laugh.

Muckdogs' fan beating the drum to sustain 71-year tradition of pro baseball in Batavia

By Howard B. Owens

If the Muckdogs don't last in Batavia, it won't be because Russ Salway didn't put every ounce of passion he has behind the effort to save the team.

The Le Roy native spends at least 10 hours a week in an office at Dwyer Stadium calling on local and regional businesses trying to sell season ticket packages and special event attendance as well as stadium advertising.

If you bump into him around town, he's likely going to want to talk at some point about the Muckdogs and the need for fan support this season -- this season, especially.

Salway has also set up a group on Facebook called, appropriately enough, Let's Keep the Batavia Muckdogs in Batavia.

Russ Salway doesn't work for the Muckdogs or the Rochester Red Wings, who took over management of the team three years ago. Salway is a volunteer.

"We are obviously operating with a small staff, so we can't get to everything," said General Manager Travis Sick. "So to have somebody like Russ, who is so familiar with the community and knows a lot of people, is a great help.

"He's a tremendous help to us," Sick added. "A lot of people say they want to help, but very few come through like Russ. He's great."

Salway said he is putting so much time and effort to promote the Muckdogs because he can't image Batavia without minor league baseball.

"If we lose the team, we'll never get another one," Salway said.

Last season, the Muckdogs lost about $150,000. That deficit was covered by Rochester Community Baseball, the community group that owns the Red Wings. Club officials say they can't sustain those kinds of losses indefinitely. 

"The Red Wings are definitely behind baseball here, but we need to show some improvement," Sick said. "This is still a business and we can't sustain a hundred-thousand-dollar loss year after year. I don't want to call this a make-or-break year, but we've got to show some improvement."

And Salway says he's making progress. He's finding more people and businesses willing to make a commitment to the Muckdogs this season.

"People are really stepping up," Salway said. "There is no reason we can't make this work."

Sick said season ticket sales are slightly ahead of sales from this time last year.

Salway has become such an integral part of promoting Muckdogs baseball, that it's hard to forget it's not his real job. He has worked for O-AT-KA Milk Products for 15 years, where he mixes ingredients for speciality drinks. 

His schedule allows him to go to Dwyer Stadium to field phone calls for a couple of hours during the week. He runs the Facebook group from home at night.

You might think all of this extra time spent on a volunteer effort might put a strain on his personal relationships, but Salway said that his fiancee, Kellie Porter, is 110 percent behind his effort and even puts in volunteer hours herself.

Both Salway and Porter are doing it, not just for the community, he said, but for their children.

"My kids grew up down the road from Dwyer and we've been going to games for years," he said. "I want the team to remain for years so I can take my grandchildren. It's such a great thing for the community. It's a safe, family-friendly environment. It's really the last place in the county were you can go and see old friends and make new ones."

Sick said it won't take much for the team to show progress -- if more people would just go to one more game a year and a few bring some friends, that would help. The team draws about 2 percent of the population to games. If that number just ticked up a notch to 3 percent, it would make a huge difference, Sick said.

The Muckdogs are part of a tradition of professional baseball in Batavia that goes back to 1939. The New York-Penn League was founded in Batavia. Salway said Batavia shouldn't lose that continuity and that sense of history.

The next big event in the life of every Muckdog's fan is the Hot Stove Dinner on Friday at the Batavia Party House. It may be possible to purchase tickets ($25) at the door, but it would be better to buy them in advance at Dwyer Stadium.

PW-A Ramparts take tourney title

By Timothy Walton

The PW-A Batavia Ramparts hockey team recently won the Batavia Winter Classic Tournament at the Falleti Ice Arena. The Ramparts were guaranteed to play 3 games in the tournament and were able to advance to the championship game by getting the top seed in the round robin play.

They defeated Monroe County 1-0, the Rochester Sabres 6-5 and the Buffalo Hornets 5-0. They were victorious in the championship game 6-4 against the Rochester Sabres.

Tyler Andrews had 2 hat-tricks in the tournament and goaltender Connor Hamilton recorded 2 shutouts.

Hamilton, Andrews and Aaron Feary received player of the game honors throughout the tournament for Batavia.

Photos: Oakfield-Alabama beats Elba in boys basketball

By Howard B. Owens

Last night in Oakfield, the Oakfield-Alabama boys basketball team beat Elba 65-43.

A.J. Kehlenbeck had 27 points and 15 rebounds for O-A and Sam McCracken scored 18 points.

Zack Beechler scored 16 points for Elba. Matthew Ramsey, 11.

Both teams are now 6-5

More pictures after the jump:

Ice Devils top ND in cross town rematch

By Timothy Walton

 

CONCENTRATION: Notre Dame's Tom Dehr concentrates on a shot as Batavia's Tim Finnell attempts a deflection.

It was another full house at the Falleti Ice Arena Tuesday night as the Notre Dame Fighting Irish hosted cross town rival Batavia Ice Devils for the second match of the season.

It was an evenly matched game for most of the first period with each team taking their own share of penalties, until Batavia found themselves having to kill off a 5-on-3 power play. Notre Dame took control at that point and defenseman Beau Richter was able to capitalize and put the Irish up 1-0 on a play that was set up by Jason Harasimowicz. The two man advantage for the Irish didn’t go away for long as the Devils took another penalty to fall back to three skaters. The Irish almost took advantage of this opportunity again as Jack Nenni put the puck by Batavia goaltender Adam Kurek, but was denied the point, as the buzzer to end the period sounded half a second before the puck crossed the line.

Batavia took advantage of the first intermission and came out to start the second period with an early goal by forward Will Mulcahy. It was the 11th goal of the season for the senior forward who is currently leading the team in goals and points (13).

With just over a minute into the third period, Notre Dame’s Jack Nenni took a boarding penalty which gave Batavia the man advantage. Batavia’s Corey Kocent almost put Batavia up by a goal, but managed to be denied by the goal post.

With 2:40 left in the third period, Batavia junior forward Tim Finnell picked up a loose puck, that he took to the front of the net and was able to backhand it through the legs of Notre Dame goaltender Tom Dehr. That goal proved to be the game winner for the Ice Devils. Kocent and Mulcahy were credited with the assists on the play.

Adam Kurek ended the game with 26 saves for Batavia, while Tom Dehr stopped 14 shots for Notre Dame.

Notre Dame won the matchup earlier this season as they defeated Batavia 4-1 in Batavia’s David M. McCarthy Memorial Christmas Tournament. Batavia is now 6-7-1 and will play Brighton/East/HFL (5-7-1) on Saturday. Notre Dame falls to 11-4 and remains in first place in their division. They host Victor (9-4) Thursday at the Falleti Ice Arena.

 

(Photos courtesy of Bare Antolos)

Ice rink events drawing crowds to area businesses

By Timothy Walton

FULL HOUSE: A packed house at the Falleti Ice Arena is just one of many times it fills the bleachers for events each year.

In this tough economy, getting people to spend money may be a hard thing to come about, as they are looking to cut back on expenses. This weekend at the Falleti Ice Arena, it showed that one area people didn't cut back on was youth sports and hockey tournaments. This weekend the Genesee Amateur Hockey Association (GAHA), hosted the Batavia Winter Classic Tournament and the turnout was one that had a positive effect on Batavia and Genesee County.

The tournament ran from Friday through Sunday and brought in teams from Buffalo, Rochester and Oswego in the Pee Wee A and B divisions, which is the age group for kids ages 11 and 12. There were a total of 8 teams that were in the tournament including two of the Batavia teams.

"Teams come into town, get hotels for the weekend, go out to eat and shop at the stores in the area in between their games." said tournament director John Hylkema. "They are spending money here".

How much are they spending? "I spent way more than I wanted to, but it's for the kids so I'm doing it for them" jokes Tom Strenberg who came to support the Oswego team. "There was the cost of the hotel (2 nights), meals all three days, and snacks here (at the rink). All the money is spent so the kids can have an enjoyable time." 

GAHA hosts about 7 tournaments each hockey season and this year, they will have the privilege to host the Midget 19-U New York State Championships in March which will bring teams from all over the state.

"These events at least double the spending at the concessions here and people are going to Timmy Ho's (Tim Horton's), Tully's, and other restaurants are making money too." says rink manager Bob Filighera.

The team from Oswego had plans to stop by the Miss Batavia diner and some of the team from the Buffalo Regals wanted to tryout TF Brown's and Sport of Kings in between their two games on Saturday.

GAHA tournaments aren't the only reason teams come to the rink. Each week many of the teams have league games that draw teams from Rochester and Buffalo area.

Both the local high school teams, Batavia Ice Devils and the Notre Dame Fighting Irish bring in out of town crowds as well including this weekend when the Ice Devils hosted Saranac/Peru and Notre Dame earlier this season hosted Eastchester/Bronxville/Tuckahoe in addition to the usual teams from the Rochester area.

Irish skate by Geneva 4-2

By Timothy Walton

The Fighting Irish (11-3) came out with a plan to do what they have been doing best all season; win, and that's just what they did as they defeated Geneva 4-2.

Coming off a loss last game against Victor, the Irish wanted to get right back on track and Jason Harasimowicz lead the offense  early by putting them on the scoreboard just 1:38 into the game on a one timer off a pass from Ivan Madafferi and Phil Vigneri. Madaferri followed up on his own rebound to score the second goal. Harasimowicz was credited with the assist.

The Irish kept the pressure coming throughout the period and were able to force Geneva's Alex Fitzgerald to take a hooking penalty. Tyler Kessler and Kyle Gannon took advantage of the powerplay and set up Jack Nenni for their third goal with 4:13 remaining in the period.

The third period scoring didn't stop there as Sean Kota and Josh Halle set up Phil Vigneri to cap of the scoring for the Irish, all in the first period.

Geneva came out strong in the second period but only managed to get one goal on the board. Eirik Velta scored off an assist from Emil Siedberg for the Panthers' first goal.

The Panthers had a plan to engineer a comeback as they came out hard in the third and Emil Siedberg posted an early goal to close the gap to 4-2. Notre Dame goaltender Tom Dehr had planned to keep the win secure and he did just that as he finished the game by stopping 17 shots on the day. Zach Koczent made 28 saves for the Panthers (3-8-1).

Notre Dame takes Batavia Rotary championship

By Howard B. Owens

Last night, the Lady Irish took the Batavia Rotary Club Basketball Tournament Championship over Pavilion, 48-29.

Notre Dame is now 7-1.

MVP Nichole Hart scored 19 points. Liz Geandreau scored 8 and Hannah Scott-McGrail netted 11.

For Pavilion, Amie Brooks, 8 and Erin Cleveland scored 6.

The All Tournament team: Geandreau, Scott-McGrail, Brooks, Chelsea Turcer from Alexander and Hart.

More pictures after the jump:

 


 

6th grade girls face off during Batavia Rotary tournament

By Howard B. Owens

During the half time of last nights finals in the Batavia Rotary Girls Basketball Tournament, 6th graders from St. Joseph School and Pavilion matched up in a game of their own.

More pictures after the jump:

Pavilion dominates in second game of Batavia Rotary tournament

By Howard B. Owens

Pavilion beat Batavia 52-25 in game two of the Batavia Rotary Girls Basketball Tournament last night at GCC.  Pavilion moves to 6-0.

For Pavilion, Amie Brooks scored 21 points. Danielle Tallo added 9.

For Batavia, Michelle Jordan scored 6 points and Lashonna Mims added 5.

More pictures after the jump:

Notre Dame wins first game of Batavia Rotary tournament

By Howard B. Owens

Notre Dame (7-1) beat Alexander 56-43 in game one of the Batavia Rotary Girls Basketball Tournament.

Liz Geandreau scored 16 points and had 11 rebounds for Notre Dame. Trish Pike had 12 points, five rebounds and three steals.

For Alexander, Anna Dominick scored 17 points and Chelsea Turcer added 11.

This was the first appearance for Alexander in the annual tournament.

More pictures after the jump:

 

 

Young players get a shot during Rotary Tournament

By Howard B. Owens

During the half times of last night's Rotary Girls Basketball tournament, area elementary school-age girls played their own games. After the jump are more pictures from those games.

 

 

 

Ramparts teams take second

By Timothy Walton

It was a day of hard fought efforts for two Ramparts teams that got a shot at the championship game of the Batavia New Year's Eve Classic Tournament that was hosted at the Falleti Ice Arena.

ROCHESTER: 5  / BATAVIA: 4-----The Bantam travel team started out the day of championships facing off against the Rochester Youth Americans. Looking for revenge as the Amerks had defeated them just a day earlier, the Ramparts took the early lead online to find themselves in a in a scoring battle, being answered back right after they scored all their goals.

 Parker Brinkworth was one of the Ramparts that had a big day. He started off the scoring with an early goal off of a set up from Mason Versage. He then followed up and assisted on goals by Zack Laird and Evan Eckerson. Brandon Holley scored Batavia's last goal off of an assist by Nate Palmer and Sean Olin. Joe Ryan ended the game with an assist as well.

ROCHESTER: 1  / BATAVIA: 0----- The PeeWee travel team came out with a long fought effort against the Rochester Grizzlies. Ramparts goalie Matthew Anauo stopped 16 shots and looked like he was going to put the game into overtime as he stopped all the shots he faced up until 1:00 left in the game. The Grizzlies beat a defender on the blue line and fired a shot by Anauo to give the Grizzlies the last minute goal and the 1-0 victory. The Ramparts had 6 shots on goal.

Two Ramparts teams in the finals

By Timothy Walton

Photo: Batavia goalie Jimmy Johnston makes a save against a Rochester forward

This year has started off on a good note for two of the Batavia Ramparts teams! They hosted the GAHA New Year's Eve Classic Tournament this weekend and both the Pee Wee Travel (11-12 year olds) and the Bantam III Travel teams both are headed to the championship game! 

The Bantam team will take on the Rochester Youth Americans at 11:30am tomorrow. They lost tonight to Rochester 4-2 in a closely fought game.

The Pee Wee team will face the Rochester Youth Grizzlies at 2:40pm tomorrow.

Both events are free to attend and are at the Falleti Ice Arena, which will have public skate in between the two games.

(Photos courtesy of Scott Grefrath)

Lions Tournament: Batavia takes championship with win over Notre Dame

By Howard B. Owens

For the sixth straight year, the Batavia High Blue Devils won the annual Batavia Lions Club Basketball Tournament, this time beating Notre Dame 66-33.

Josh Budlong had 14 rebounds as Batavia moved to 6-1. Andrew Hoy scored 12 points. Tom Rapone scored 10 points for Notre Dame. Gianni Zambito added 9 more.  Co Co Irvin was the tournament's MVP. He scored 15 points in the final.

AUDIO:  Post game chat with tournament MVP Co Co Irvin (mp3).

There are 46 more photos from tonight's final game after the jump:

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Irish hockey headed to another championship game

By Timothy Walton

The Fighting Irish are off to another championship game again after defeating Bishop Kearney/ East Irondequoit 5-2 in the first game of Brockport's Winter Tournament in ice hockey action.

The game began relatively even as it took two periods to get a score on the board as BK took the early second period lead with a goal by Brandon Brady just 1:43 into the period. That's when Notre Dame went to work and registered four goals just 1:02 apart. Dylan Versage and Beau Richter set up Jason Harasimowicz on the powerplay to tie the game at 1-1. Then just 16 seconds later, Harasimowicz and Ivan Madafferi set up Versage to give ND the lead. Their scoring still wasn't over. Just 23 seconds after that Phil Vigneri gave ND the third goal on a solo effort. Just 23 seconds after that Jack Nenni registered the fourth goal off of an assist from David Wolcott.

BK ended out the 2nd period scoring by putting the game at 4-2 with a unassisted goal by Shane Ashe.

With 5:26 into the 3rd period Josh Halle gave Harasimowicz the pass to give ND the final goal on the powerplay and to cap off the scoring at 5-2.

Tom Dehr made 16 saves for Notre Dame who improves their record to 7-2.

Brett Marrapese made 46 saves for Bishop Kearney who falls to 1-7.

The Irish will take on Brockport tonight at 7:00 in the championship game at the Tuttle Ice Arena in Brockport. Brockport defeated Spencerport last night 4-1 to advance to the finals.

 

Lions Tournament: Batavia moves to 5-1 with win over Albion

By Howard B. Owens

Batavia will advance to the next round to play Notre Dame in the annual basketball tournament sponsored by the Batavia Lions Club. The Blue Devils beat Albion 63-55 and improved the team record to 5-1. Andrew Hoy scored 16 points. Justin Washington added 12 points and seven rebounds for Batavia. Co Co Irvin tacked on 13.

More pictures after the jump:

Pictures: Lions Tournament, Notre Dame beats Perry 52-41

By Howard B. Owens

In the first game Monday night of the annual basketball tournament sponsored by the Batavia Lions Club, Notre Dame beat Perry 52-41.  The Irish are now 5-0. Vinny Zambito scored 19 points.

More pictures after the jump:

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