Varsity Softball

Due to the horrid weather conditions all week, the girls’ varsity softball team got to play only one game this past week and that was at Rome Catholic last Saturday, April 28.  

One bad inning cost the Town of Webb team a victory as they lost the game 11-5. In the first inning, Old Forge got off to a fine start. Shelby Egnaczyk led off the game with a single and Katie Connell walked. The next two hitters made outs but the two runners moved up one base and both scored on a single by Mackenzie Kelly. Kelly stole second and came home on a single by Haley Josephson to make the score 3-0.  

In the third inning, Jessica Menges singled and later in the inning, came home on a Kelly single. It was in the bottom of the third inning that cost our girls the game.  Sloppy play that made the inning last longer than it should have, gave Rome Catholic eight runs, most of them unearned.  That was the game.

Old Forge scored their final run in the seventh inning when Connell led off with a double and eventually scored on a single by Kelly.  

Kelly led the offense with three singles and four RBI’s. Connell had a double and scored two of the runs. Andrea Frey had the only other extra-base hit as she stroked a double in the sixth inning. Egnaczyk had two singles and Menges, Josephson and Nicole Redpath each had a single.  

The team has two straight home games this Tuesday and Wednesday against Oriskany and Poland respectively.

Varsity Baseball

The varsity baseball team played one game this past week at Rome Catholic on Saturday, April 28. Rome won this league game 13-8 to improve their league record to 2-3 and their overall record to 3-6. The game should have been a closer game than the final score shows as each team collected only six hits. Too many walks and errors made the difference as Old Forge fell to 0-4 in the league and 1-5 overall.  

Old Forge will play two home games this Tuesday and Wednesday, May 1 and 2. A good Oriskany team will visit on Tuesday followed by Poland on Wednesday. The games start at 4:30 p.m. and the team would appreciate a good turnout in hopes of picking up their first league victories.  

Girls’ Varsity Track

The girls’ varsity track team had one meet this past week with the other meet at New York Mills being cancelled. The meet that they did run was at Remsen on Wednesday, April 25 on a cold and damp day, the best day of a miserable week of weather.  Waterville, a Class C school and Sherburne-Earlville, a Class B school were also competing that day.  

The Webb girls did not let the foul weather affect their performance as much as it may have bothered two of the other schools. Remsen did their thing and continued to show just how strong they are in the running events and easily won the meet over all three contenders. Remsen defeated the Town of Webb team 90-49. However, Old Forge continued their fine season as they defeated Waterville, 71-52 and Sherburne-Earlville, 71-58.  

The three girls that had so much success in an earlier meet continued that success.  Caitlin Bailey won the 100 meter hurdles and 400 meter hurdles in 18.1 and 74.2 respectively. Lauren Holt won the long jump at 12’ 10” and high jump at 4’ 6”,  placed second in the triple jump at 29’ 8 1/2” and fourth in the pole vault at 6’ 6” to show her versatility. Maddie Phaneuf won the 1500 meter run in 5:14.1, her best time of the young season, and placed second in the 800 with a 2:35 time.  

Other strong places were turned in by Jessie Hannah in placing second in the high hurdles in 19.1, fourth in the intermediate hurdles in 84.7, and second in the high jump at 4’ 2”. Daria Orekhov and Sarah Branch both placed in the 100 and 200 meter dashes, Megan Greene placed third in the 3000 meter run and Danielle Gibbs and Chloe Barkauskas placed in the 400.  

Boys’ Varsity Track

The boys varsity track team performed well enough to defeat all schools in its only meet of the week at Remsen on Wednesday, April 25. The closest meet they had was against Waterville, a fine running events team, and they defeated them by a score of 86-55.  

The Town of Webb team proved to be too versatile for the other three schools as they scored points in all 14 individual events. Again, they dominated the field events although they were not quite as strong as they had hoped. Weather conditions had something to do with it and conditioning also had something to do with it. They need more meets under their belts to get into solid meet conditioning so they can rebound better from a tough running event and still perform well in their next event.  

In the running events, Kevin Kress won the 110 high hurdles in 16.1 and the 200 meter dash in 24.2, both good times, especially on such a cold day. Connor Rockhill placed second in the high hurdles in 16.3 and first in the 400 intermediate hurdles in 60.8. Other places were by Trevor Rice as he placed second in the 1600 meter run in 5:33.1, Ethan Kress tried his hand at running for the first time this year and placed third in the 400 meter dash in 58.1, Trevor Godemann ran a workmanlike race in the 800 and won the event in 2:11.5, Tayler Schmid ran the 3200 for the first time and placed second in 12:07.5 and Dane Daiker had his personal best time in the high hurdles at 18.6 to place fourth and he also placed fourth in the intermediate hurdles.  It was also nice to see two other eighth graders place in this meet as Luke Monroe and Henry Uzdavinis both placed. Hunter Lawrence, running in his first meet, placed in the 100 meter and 800 meter runs.  

In the field events, Kenny Pastore, Cody Earl and Will Johnson placed third, fourth and fifth respectively in the shot put and second, third and fourth in the discus. Ethan Kress won the discus throw with a 105’ plus throw. All of the throwers were off due to the cold day as they complained about being able to grip the shot and disc. Rockhill won the pole vault at 12’ and the high jump at 5’ 10”, Kevin Kress was second in the pole vault at 10’ 6” and second in the high jump at 5’ 10” as he had one miss and Rockhill had none, Daiker placed in the high jump at 5’ 4” and in the pole vault, Godemann won the triple jump with a very fine 41’9” jump followed by Ethan Kress at 40’ 4” and they took second and third in the long jump with poorer than normal jumps.  

Both the boys and girls teams will have two meets on Monday, April 30 at Remsen and Wednesday, May 2 at Canastota. The boys will also be taking part in the New Hartford Invitational this Friday, May 4. There should be over 20 schools competing with most of them Class A and AA schools.

Varsity golf

The bad weather affected all teams this past week and golf was no exception. They did get in one match and their second match had to be postponed.  

On Monday, April 23, the team played the host school, Poland, at Glass Hill, a par 34 course. If you ever played golf in cold weather, you know just how hard it can be to play when you grip the irons and try to hit the ball. It seemed not to matter to these young golfers on Coach John “Louie” Ehrensbeck’s team as they played very well in overwhelming Poland, 169-207. Playing in the Northern Division of the Center State Conference, the Town of Webb team moved their record to 3-0, tops in the division.  Besides Poland, Remsen, Adirondack, Oriskany and West Canada Valley make up the rest of the Northern Division.  

Leading the way for his team was Colin Criss who matched par with a fine 34 score.  Lexie Haehl followed with a 43, Corey Down had a 46 and Bryan Townsend broke into the team scoring column with a fine round of 46. In CSC play, only the top four golfers count for the team score. Some larger school leagues count the top five scorers making their team scores seem bad when they are not.  Also, one must consider the challenge of each course.  Some courses are rather easy and some can be very difficult to play.  

Ehrensbeck’s team now stands at 3-0 in their division with some key matches being played this week. Now that the Thendara Golf Course has opened up for the season, they will start having some home matches which always gives the home team an advantage.