Sunday, June 2, 2019: Geneva's Fishback earns boys singles crown in tennis

   Leading off today: Ryan Fishback finally yielded a set, but that didn't keep the Geneva junior from winning the NYSPHSAA boys tennis singles championship Saturday at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing.

   Fishback downed Kabir Rajpal of Syosset 6-0, 3-6, 6-2 in the final. He was the runner-up in the 2018 tournament.

   "It was a battle," Fishback said. "We were playing really physical tennis -- long rallies, hard hitting -- just happy to get through it."

   Losing the second set was a jolt after winning the opening set so convincingly.

   "It's never easy to rebound from dropping a set, especially after playing so well in the first," Fishback said. "But I think it was really good for my mental toughness and I was able to rebound."

   In an all-Section 1 doubles final, Nikolay Sahakyan and Jason Shuler of Scarsdale defeated Mamaroneck's Charlie Levinson and Connor Aylett 6-3, 6-7, 6-4. It was a rematch of last week's Section 1 final, which Sahakyan and Shuler won 6-3, 7-6 (3).

   A year ago, Levinson and Aylett defeat Scarsdale's Sahakyan and Luke Smith for the state title.

   Here's a link to the singles and doubles brackets.

   Marathon win for title: Westlake beat Briarcliff 5-4 in 12 innings to wrap up the Section 1 Class B baseball championship in a contest that lasted nearly four hours.

   The Wildcats tied the game in the seventh on Thomas Carpenter's 100th career hit, a run-scoring single, but left the bases loaded to end the inning. They scored the winning run on Joe Pennini's sacrifice fly in the 12th.

   Senior lefty Thomas Iazzetta pitched into the eighth inning. After moving to center field in the ninth, he cut down the go-ahead run at home to end a threat.

   It's been awhile: Hyde Park FDR won its first Section 9 baseball championship since 1971 by beating Minisink Valley 9-3 in the Section 9 Class A final.

    • Ballston Spa won its first Section 2 championship since 1973, beating Averill Park 9-3 in the Section 2 Class A final.

   "The 1973 team actually wrote me a letter. Ten of them were at our quarterfinal game, and just to have our entire town there, this is for everybody out in Ballston Spa, truly," Scotties coach Curtis Nobles said. "The first thing we had to do was believe. The second thing was trust, and these guys trust me and I trust them. That is why we are sectional champs."

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   More baseball: McQuaid continued a dominating season in Section 5 as Hunter Walsh went the distance in a 7-1 win over Penfield in the Class AA championship game.

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   With two outs and none on in the bottom of the first, the Knights' Tyler Griggs laced a liner to right- center and raced around the bases after the ball skipped by the Penfield outfielders to the wall. Griggs saw coach Tony Fuller waving him to third and then signaling him to keep going.

   "He started rounding me to home," Griggs said, "and I was like, 'Oh jeez!' I just turned on the burners and went."

   McQuaid added a second two-out run in the inning with the help of an error, and that was all Walsh needed en route to his second complete game of the postseason.

   Softball surprise: Panas (15-9) surprised unbeaten Lakeland 7-2 for the Section 1 Class A crown. The 10th-seeded Panthers eliminated the top three seeds in the tournament en route to their first sectional title since 1983.

   Panas lost to Lakeland twice during the regular season.

   "We were wondering, 'Are we going to run out of gas eventually?' Every- body was," Panas coach Dale Chappelle said. "I'm on cloud nine. This could not be a better moment for this program."

   More softball: When your pitcher has allowed one earned run every 18 games, staking her to a five-run lead in the first inning all but ends the game.

   That's more or less what happened in Deposit's 6-0 win vs. Marathon in the Section 4 Class D championship game. Senior Makenzie Stiles, fresh off being selected Gatorade's New York player of the year earlier in the week, struck out 14 in a one-hitter as the Lumberjacks bagged their sixth straight title and eighth in nine seasons.

   No. 9 hitter Kayla Eldred's two-run single was the big blow in the opening salvo,.

   Girls golf: Medina junior Melanie Green took the first round lead in the NYSPHSAA championships at Deerfield Country Club in Brockport, shooting an even-par 72 to begin defense of her 2018 championship.

   Unadilla Valley eighth-grader Bailey Shoemaker, the runner-up a year ago, shot an opening 73 and Alice Hodge of Ursuline held down third place with a 76.