Genny hammers Henninger 11-4

Solid team effort key to Cats victory

Unlike the first contest against the Henninger Black Knights, the West Genesee Wildcats came to play Friday evening, sending their seniors off in style with an 11-4 drubbing. The Wildcat side of the stadium was full of parents, relatives and alum along with the girl’s varsity team and visits from the WG JV and Camillus Middle school teams. The fence outside the entrance to the field and the front of the home side bleachers were adorned with signs congratulating the 14 senior members playing their last home game.

But it was junior middie and face-off expert Matt Cassalia who put Genny on the board first as he fired a right handed shot between the legs of Henninger goalie Tim Garback less than two minutes in to the game to put the Cats ahead 1-0. Henninger threatened with a man-up opportunity at the 9:30 mark but junior big-stick defender Brian Calabrese intercepted an over the cage feed and cleared the Cats out of trouble. Junior attackman Drew Dabrowski tried to increase the lead with a diving wrap around shot but was snuffed in the crease by Garback. The Knights used the momentum from the save an knotted the game when senior middie Joe D’Arrigo found space between junior goalie Casey Rotella’s legs to knot the game at 1-1 with 7:49 left in the first quarter. Rottella and Garback then took turns keeping their teams in the game, with Garback turning aside a point blank shot by Cassalia.

Then it was Rottella’s turn as senior middie Syracuse University bound Greg Rommel fired a seeing eye shot at the lower left hand corner of the cage that Rottella snared with his stick. Cassalia then took another turn firing high on Garback who smothered the shot in his cross. Senior co-captain Mike Conklin put Genny ahead 2-1 at 4:37 with an advantageous goal when he lept high and swatted in a rebound shot from sophomore attackman Andrew Hanover that had deflected off of Garback’s stick.. Genny senior middie Matt O’Connell then took a pass from senior midfielder Jim Mullaley and fired a right - handed cannon from 15 yards out at 3:25 to put the Wildcats up 3-1. Conklin netted his second of the game with just 1:37 left after he took a pass from Dabrowski and chinked it in off the left post to end the quarter with Genny ahead 4-1.

Rotella rose to the occasion again for the Cats at 8:51 of the second when he turned another shot aside by Rommel. Dabrowski then attempted to add to the Genny lead with another diving wrap around that Garback snuffed on the crease. At 7:16 sophomore Hanover took a nice cross-cage feed from Dabrowski and fired at a widecage only to have Garback slide across and deflect the shot wide. O’Connell did finally get one past Garback with an unassisted goal his second at 5:53 as he moved from left to right in front of the cage putting Genny ahead a 5-1.

After making two more key saves against Hanover and then Cassalia Henninger looked to take advantage of a 30 second West Genesee pushing penalty, but the Genny defense stiffened once again and cleared the ball from harms way. The Cats appeared to take a 6-1 lead as Hanover drove to the goal and stuck a shot in the lower left hand corner but it was wiped out by a crease violation. Mullaley made the next one count at 2:38 when he took a pass from Hanover and drilled a shot past Garback to push the margin to 6-1. Henninger did have one last gasp before the half when Rommel picked up the ball just inside the midfield stripe and darted in on goal only to have his shot snared by Rotella as time expired.

The Black knights tried to increase their offensive pressure by controlling the ball in the early moments of the third quarter and it almost paid off as shot was deflected in front and went past Rotella, but senior defenseman Dean Mancini had slide behind Rotella and kicked the ball away from the empty net. Henninger’s pressure finally paid dividends as Rommel found the range against Rotella to cut the Genny lead to 6-2 with 5:57 left in the third. With 3:59 left in the third Hanover got a goal back for Genny as he was driving towards the goal and stopped momentarily to check his stick to see if he still had the ball after a hard check, the defenseman also stopped but could not respond to Hanover’s restart and he darted to the cage and increased the lead to 7-2.

Hanover haunted the Knights again less than a minute later when he was the recipient of a Dabrowski assist and Genny was rolling with an 8-2 lead. After Henninger’s third goal of the game Senior middie Matt Whoolshlager returned the favor with a top-shelf blistering shot assisted by Hanover at 7:18 and the route was official with Genny ahead 9-3. Dabrowski added the Cat’s tenth of the game with an assist to O’Connell with only 3:04 left in the game and Mike Conklin added insult to injury with a tally with only four seconds remaining with an assist to Cassalia as the Cats ran away with the win.


West Genesee scoring:

Mike Conklin 3 goals, Andrew Hanover 2 goals, 2 assist, Matt O’Conell 2 goals, 1 assist,Matt Cassalia 1 goal, 1 assist Drew Dabrowski 1 goal, 2 assists, Jim Mullaley 1 goal, 1 assist Matt Woolshlager 1 goal. Saves Casey Rotella 11

Back to main Game Scoop page