Just two more games, here and there, and maybe the subject is different and the Baldwinsville boys tennis team earn a much larger stature that it could have ever imagined. As it was, though, the Bees had to settle for a praise-worthy performance last Tuesday against reigning power Fayetteville-Manlius that resulted in a 4-3 defeat — and a narrowly-missed chance at history. Every B’ville player knew that the Hornets had not lost a single head-to-head league match since 1997, a streak that had stretched to 183 matches by the time F-M met the Bees. And here, the Hornets would get three points with relative ease. Shaun Devlin lost to Wilbert Geng 6-0, 6-0, and Kevin Thompson took a 6-1, 6-3 loss to Mike Mintskovsky. In doubles, Cody Buck and Kevin Pregent fell to Kunel Sangani and Scott Trobert 6-3, 6-3.
But Matt Funicello would give the Bees a crucial singles point, beating Nick Westergaard 6-4, 6-4, and Ezra Kim and Danny Kot would dominate the second set in a 6-4, 6-0 sweep of Danny and Jimmy Miron. When Grady Schmidt and Yaro Nieves rallied from a poor first set to beat Divakar Lai and Eric Rosenthal 1-6, 6-4, 7-5, B’ville had three points, and the fourth, with all the history attached to it, was within sight. Ben Weiss and Shawn Sullivan roared past Eric Rosenthal and Ben Kaplan 6-1 in the first set, then were close in the second set before losing 6-4. In the final, decisive set, Weiss and Sullivan moved within two games of winning, but got broken late, allowing Rosenthal and Kaplan to prevail 7-5, more than two hours after the match began. Two days later, the Bees swept Nottingham 7-0 on another wind-swept day, never losing more than three games in any single set. Sullivan ripped past Renaldo Minelli 6-0, 6-1, with Matt Varga and G.R. Barth beating Lon Nguyen and Isaac Garland 6-1, 6-3. Zach Wolgemuth and Jed Clouston played in doubles and got past Sherwin Williams and Desean Dickson 6-2, 6-0.