By PAUL GOTHAM
ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Five years ago, Palmyra-Macedon baseball saw its season end with an opening-round loss in the Section V Class B playoffs. On Friday, the Red Raiders will take the field at Maine-Endwell High School in the NYSPHSAA Class B semifinals looking to add to a list of program firsts.
“Everything has worked out,” said seventh-year head coach Bryan Rodman whose Red Raiders (24-0) will face Spackenkill (23-2) of Section IX for the right to play in the state championship game on Saturday. “Everything has had to align for us to be able to do this. It doesn’t just happen. There’s definitely been some bumps in the road throughout the first couple of years.”
Last Tuesday, Pal-Mac baseball won its second straight sectional title and third in program history. Two days later, the Red Raiders clinched a spot in regionals for the first time and on Saturday took home the New York State Class B Far West Regional plaque.
“It’s surreal,” said Rodman who played at Pal-Mac under then-head coach and current athletic director Tom Schmandt. “We’ve been floating around a couple years. Last year the sectional title happened. I knew we’d be good. I didn’t know it was going to come to fruition like this.”
VIEW MORE MARK WASHINGTON PHOTOS HERE.
At the core of Pal-Mac’s success is a pair of fifth-year varsity players: Paul Goodness and Alex Wootton. The two seniors were a part of the Red Raider squad that finished with 5 wins and 14 losses in 2018.
“It’s rewarding,” Wootton remarked. “It’s a great accomplishment and I couldn’t have a better group of guys to do it with.”
That Pal-Mac team lost the last eight games of the season before falling to Haverling in the opening round of sectionals, 15-0. Goodness saw beyond that year’s results and looked ahead to the possibilites.
“The core group of guys that we’ve had, we’ve grown up playing through little league and now through school ball,” Goodness said. “I knew we were going to be special by the time I was a junior or a senior.”
Classmate Chris Finocchario, Jr. joined Goodness and Wootton on varsity the following year along with eighth-graders Noah Brooks, Ian Goodness and Christian Morrison. Those six occupy the top two-thirds of the current Pal-Mac batting order.
That team knocked off then-reigning sectional champ Midlakes 18-6 to open the 2019 slate of games. One day later, they rallied for a walk-off win over Finger Lakes East rival, Geneva.
“That’s when it all started,” Paul Goodness said. “We gained momentum for the whole year and kept winning. It hasn’t really stopped since then.”
Pal-Mac finished 15-5 that year but fell to Greece Odyssey, 1-0 in the opening round of sectionals. Ian Goodness hurled a complete-game, one-hitter in the defeat.
Their opportunity to build off that success took a detour when Covid-19 hit. Rodman, though, pointed to a commitment he saw pre-pandemic that didn’t skip a beat when practices were able to resume in 2021. Players returned to early-morning workouts that became a staple of the program a couple years earlier.
“For them to have that dedication and at seventh and eighth grade to wake up that early and sacrifice some sleep, most kids don’t want to do that. They’ve been doing that all the way up to now. They respect the grind and want to get better no matter if it’s six o’clock in the morning, five o’clock at night it doesn’t matter. They’re ready to get better at baseball.”
Pal-Mac beat Hornell, 5-2 in the 2021 final – it was the program’s first championship since 2013. Their season ended there with the state forced to cancel its tournament for a second straight year because of Covid-19.
“Coming off my freshman year we won our league,” Goodness said. “We got upset in the first round of sectionals. We were all looking forward to the next year (2020) so much. We knew we had a good team. Not having a season my sophomore year made my junior year even more exciting. To get the sectional title was great, but we knew we had more left in the tank that year, so it stunk that we couldn’t go any further. Now we have that opportunity and hopefully we can keep winning.”
Pal-Mac defeated Batavia, 6-1 in the 2022 B1 final. Two days later, they avenged the drubbing received in 2018 with a 7-0 victory over Haverling. On Saturday, the Red Raiders mercy-ruled Medina of Section VI to claim the title of NYS Class B Far West Region Champs and clinch a spot in the state’s final four.
“You come in 5-14, you don’t really have much hope,” Wootton said recalling the ’18 season. “You really don’t know where it’s going to go. Practices are just a drag every single day because you’re just waiting to go get beat again. Now we’re coming to practice and competing. We’re having fun every single day and good things happen.”
A 5 p.m. first pitch is scheduled on Friday.
“We could look back at that year and think of all the major improvements we’ve had, major adjustments hitting and pitching,” said Finocchario who was the winning pitcher in the sectional final and again in the regional championship. “Now we’re here and that’s all that matters.”
Leave a Reply